Background
The film is loosely based on the 1956 novel by Charles Mercer, Rachel Cade, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Film rights were bought prior to publication by William Dozier who was head of production at RKO. In September 1956 he announced that Stanley Rubin would produce and the film would be made in Africa with John Wayne. It would be part of a five-picture slate from Rubin worth $12 million starting with The Girl Most Likely. [3] Katharine Hepburn was announced as a possible star. [4] Then Dozier offered the lead to Deborah Kerr. [5] Stirling Silliphant signed to write the script. [6] In October Dozier said the film would be one of fifteen RKO would make the following year, others including Stage Struck, Bangkok, Ten Days in August, Three Empty Rooms, Affair in Portifino, Sex and Miss McAdoo, Pakistan, Galveston, On My Honor, The Naked and the Dead, Cash MCad, Far Alert, Journey to the Center of the Earth and Curtain Going Up. [7]
RKO wound up as a company – most of the fifteen films listed were not made. Film rights went to Warner Bros who in November 1958 announced they would make the film. [8] In March 1959 Edward Anhalt was assigned to write the script and Henry Blanke was to produce. [9] Blanke had also produced The Nun's Story (1959), starring Audrey Hepburn. The Sins of Rachel Cade had some familiarities to that story particularly with the lead character: a religious female working to help during wartime. Also, Peter Finch plays an atheistic authority figure in both films.
In June Warners announced that Carroll Baker would star and Gordon Douglas would direct. [10] Peter Finch was announced as the male star. However Baker refused to make the movie and Warners gave the lead to Angie Dickinson, who had just made Rio Bravo and The Bramble Bush for the studio. [11]
In August Peter Finch arrived in Hollywood for filming, which began August 27. He called his role "a good, rather cynical part with some excellent dialogue." [12] Rafer Johnson signed in September. [13] Roger Moore's casting was announced in October – he was then making The Alaskans for Warner Bros. [14]
Angie Dickinson is a retired American film and television actress. She began her career on television, appearing in many anthology series during the 1950s, before gaining her breakthrough role in Gun the Man Down (1956) with James Arness and the Western film Rio Bravo (1959) with John Wayne and Dean Martin, for which she received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year.
Rafer Lewis Johnson was an American decathlete and film actor. He was the 1960 Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon, having won silver in 1956. He had previously won a gold in the 1955 Pan American Games. He was the USA team's flag bearer at the 1960 Olympics and lit the Olympic cauldron at the Los Angeles Games in 1984.
Terry Moore is an American film and television actress who began her career as a child actor. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Come Back, Little Sheba (1952). She is one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Gordon Douglas Brickner was an American film director and actor, who directed many different genres of films over the course of a five-decade career in motion pictures.
Edward Small was an American film producer from the late 1920s through 1970, who was enormously prolific over a 50-year career. He is best known for the movies The Count of Monte Cristo (1934), The Man in the Iron Mask (1939), The Corsican Brothers (1941), Brewster's Millions (1945), Raw Deal (1948), Black Magic (1949), Witness for the Prosecution (1957) and Solomon and Sheba (1959).
The First Traveling Saleslady is a 1956 American film, starring Ginger Rogers and Carol Channing. Commercially unsuccessful, it was among the films that helped to close RKO Pictures.
The Unholy Wife is a 1957 Technicolor film noir crime film produced and directed by John Farrow at RKO Radio Pictures, but released by Universal Pictures as RKO was in the process of ceasing its film activities. The film features Diana Dors, Rod Steiger, Tom Tryon and Beulah Bondi. The screenplay was written by William Durkee and Jonathan Latimer
Norman Krasna was an American screenwriter, playwright, producer, and film director who penned screwball comedies centered on a case of mistaken identity. Krasna directed three films during a forty-year career in Hollywood. He garnered four Academy Award screenwriting nominations, winning once for 1943's Princess O'Rourke, which he also directed.
Charles Schnee was a screenwriter and film producer. He wrote the scripts for the Westerns Red River (1948) and The Furies (1950), the social melodrama They Live by Night (1949), and the cynical Hollywood saga The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), for which he won an Academy Award.
Gentleman Jim is a 1942 film directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Errol Flynn as heavyweight boxing champion James J. Corbett (1866–1933). The supporting cast includes Alexis Smith, Jack Carson, Alan Hale, William Frawley, and Ward Bond as John L. Sullivan. The movie was based upon Corbett's 1894 autobiography, The Roar of the Crowd. The role was one of Flynn's favorites.
Henry Blanke was a German-born film producer who also worked as an assistant director, supervisor, writer, and production manager. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture for The Nun’s Story (1959).
The film appearances of movie actor Errol Flynn (1909–1959) are listed here, including his short films and one unfinished feature.
I Married a Woman is a 1958 American comedy film made in 1956, directed by Hal Kanter, written by Goodman Ace, and starring George Gobel, Diana Dors, and Adolphe Menjou. The picture was produced by Gobel's company, Gomalco Productions. I Married a Woman also features John Wayne in a cameo role as himself. It was filmed in RKO-Scope and black and white except for one of Wayne's two scenes, which was shot in Technicolor. The film's original title was So There You Are'. The film was a box-office disappointment, which hurt the careers of Dors and Gobel.
Escapade in Japan is a 1957 American family adventure film. It was directed by Arthur Lubin and starred Teresa Wright, Cameron Mitchell, Jon Provost and Roger Nakagawa.
Verboten! is a 1959 American romantic war drama film written, produced and directed by Samuel Fuller and starring James Best, Susan Cummings, Tom Pittman, and Harold Daye. It was the last film of the influential but troubled RKO Radio Pictures studio, which co-produced it with Fuller's own Globe Enterprises. It was filmed at the RKO Forty Acres backlot. Distribution was handled by Columbia Pictures.
The Bramble Bush is a 1960 American drama film, based on the controversial novel of the same name, directed by Daniel Petrie and starring Richard Burton, Angie Dickinson, Barbara Rush, Jack Carson and James Dunn. It was released by Warner Bros.
The Petty Girl (1950), known in the UK as Girl of the Year, is a musical romantic comedy Technicolor film starring Robert Cummings and Joan Caulfield. Cummings portrays painter George Petty who falls for Victoria Braymore (Caulfield), the youngest professor at Braymore College who eventually becomes "The Petty Girl".
Wolf Larsen is a 1958 American adventure film directed by Harmon Jones and starring Barry Sullivan and Peter Graves.
Earl Felton (1909–1972) was an American screenwriter.
Charles E. Mercer was a Canadian-American author, editor and journalist.
