Bacall meet in a nightclub and flirt while ostensibly talking about horse racing. In order to keep the running-time of the film the same, the scene of Marlowe and the DA was cut.6 SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950) Billy Wilder’s film classic about an aging Hollywood film queen and a down-on-his-luck screenwriter originally incorporated a framing sequence which opened and closed the story at the Los Angeles County Morgue. In a scene described by Wilder as one of the best he’d ever shot, the body of Joe Gillis (William Holden) is rolled into the morgue to join three dozen other corpses, some of whom – in voice-over – tell Gillis how they died. Eventually Gillis tells his story, which takes us to a flashback of his affair with Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). The movie was previewed with this opening in Illinois and Long Island. Because both audiences inappropriately found the morgue scene hilarious, the film’s release was delayed six months so that a new beginning could be shot in which police find Gillis’s corpse floating in Norma’s pool while Gillis’s voice narrates the events leading to his death.
7 LIMELIGHT (1952) Charlie Chaplin’s film about a vaudeville comic on the decline features a scene in which Chaplin, as the elderly Calvero, makes his comeback in a music hall sketch. The routine, which originally ran to 10 minutes, has Calvero performing onstage with an old colleague, played by Buster Keaton. It has been said that while Chaplin was good, Keaton was sensational. Consequently, Chaplin allowed only a small portion of the scene to remain in release prints.
8 THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH (1955) Originally, the movie included a scene of Marilyn Monroe in the bathtub, getting her toe stuck in the faucet. Although Monroe remained covered by bubbles, the scene ran afoul of the Hollywood censors, so director Billy Wilder cut it.
9 SPARTACUS (1960) Of the 167 days it took Stanley Kubrick to shoot Spartacus, six weeks were spent directing an elaborate battle sequence in which 8,500 extras dramatised the clash between Roman troops and Spartacus’s slave army. Several scenes in the battle drew the ire of the Legion of Decency and were therefore cut. These included shots of men being dismembered. (Dwarfs with false torsos and an armless man with a phony ‘breakaway’ limb were used to give authenticity.) Seven years later, when the Oscar-winning film was reissued, an additional 22 minutes were chopped out, including a scene in which Varinia (Jean Simmons) watches Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) writhe in agony on a cross. Her line ‘Oh, please die, my darling’ was excised, and the scene was cut to make it appear that Spartacus was already dead. These cuts were restored to the film in the early ’90s.
10 SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS (1961) As filmed, Splendor in the Grass included a sequence in which Wilma Dean Loomis (Natalie Wood) takes a bath while arguing with her mother (Audrey Christie). The bickering finally becomes so intense that Wilma jumps out of the tub and runs nude down a hallway to her bedroom, where the camera cuts to a close-up of her bare legs kicking hysterically on the mattress. Both the Hollywood censors and the Catholic Legion of Decency objected to the hallway display. Consequently, director Elia Kazan dropped the piece, leaving an abrupt jump from tub to bed.
11 DR NO (1962) The first of the James Bond films ended with Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress) being attacked by crabs when Bond (Sean Connery) rescues her. The crabs moved too slowly to look truly menacing, so the ending was re-shot without them.
12 EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK (1972) ‘What Makes a Man a Homosexual?’ was one of the many vignettes filmed for the Woody Allen movie using the title of Dr David Reuben’s bestselling book. The sequence stars Allen as a common spider anxious to court a black widow (Louise Lasser). After doing a mating dance on Lasser’s web, Allen makes love to the widow, only to be devoured by her afterwards. The scene was finally cut out of the film because Allen couldn’t come up with a suitable way to end the piece.
13 BIG (1988) In this film, Tom Hanks plays Josh, a 12-year-old who becomes an adult literally overnight when he makes a wish on a machine at a carnival. While an adult, Josh falls in love with a woman named Susan (Elizabeth Perkins), but he has to leave her behind when he makes another wish to become 12 again. In the original version, there was an additional scene at the end, in which Josh is back at school and a new girl named Susan arrives. The implication is that Susan went back to the carnival machine to make herself Josh’s age. Due to negative audience feedback, the scene was cut from the movie.
14 JERRY MAGUIRE (1996) Jerry Maguire originally included a fictional Reebok advertisement starring Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), which was cut from the film by director Cameron Crowe. However, when the movie was broadcast on the Showtime cable network, the commercial was restored, playing under the closing credits. Reportedly, the scene was put back in because of a lawsuit filed by Reebok against Columbia Pictures over the terms of product placement in the film.
15 TITANIC (1997) The film ends with Rose (Gloria Stuart) going to the deck of the research ship investigating the Titanic wreck, leaning over the railing, and dropping a necklace with the valuable ‘Heart of the Ocean’ diamond into the ocean. As originally filmed, the crew members of the research ship see Rose, mistakenly believe that she is planning to jump overboard, and try to talk her out of committing suicide. When they realise what she is actually doing, they try to persuade her to preserve the necklace. Director James Cameron decided that he wanted the scene to focus on Rose, so he re-shot it with her alone.
– D.B. & C.F.
37 Famous Writers Who Worked for the Movies
1 JAMES AGEE (novelist; 1909–1955) Films worked on include: The Quiet One (1948); The African Queen (1951); The Night of the Hunter (1955)
2 MAYA ANGELOU (poet; 1928–) Georgia, Georgia (1972); Poetic Justice (1993)
3 RAY BRADBURY (science-fiction writer; 1920–) Moby Dick (1956); Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)
4 BERTOLT BRECHT (playwright; 1898–1956) Hangmen Also Die (1943)
5 CHARLES BUKOWSKI (poet and novelist; 1920–1994) The Killers (1984); Barfly (1987); Lonely at the Top (1993)
6 TRUMAN CAPOTE (novelist; 1924–1984) Beat the Devil (1954); The Innocents (1961)
7 RAYMOND CHANDLER (detective story writer; 1888–1959) And Now Tomorrow (1944); Double Indemnity (1944); The Unseen (1945); The Blue Dahlia (1946); Strangers on a Train (1951)
8 MICHAEL CRICHTON (novelist; 1942–) Westworld (1973); Coma (1978); The Great Train Robbery (1979); Jurassic Park (1993); Rising Sun (1993)
9 ROALD DAHL (author; 1916–1990) You Only Live Twice (1967); Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968); Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
10 WILLIAM FAULKNER (novelist; 1897–1962) Today We Live (1933); Road to Glory (1936); To Have and Have Not (1945); The Big Sleep (1946); Land of the Pharaohs (1955)
11 F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (novelist; 1896–1940) A Yank at Oxford (1938); Three Comrades (1938); Gone with the Wind (1939); The Women (1939); Madame Curie (1943)
12 CARLOS FUENTES (novelist; 1928–) Pedro Paramo (1967); Muneca Riera (1971)
13 GRAHAM GREENE (novelist; 1904–91) The Green Cockatoo (1937); The Fallen Idol (1948); The Third Man (1950); Saint Joan (1957); Our Man in Havana (1960); The Comedians (1967)
14 DASHIELL HAMMETT (detective story writer; 1894–1961) City Streets (1931); Mister Dynamite (1935); After the Thin Man (1937); Another Thin Man (1939); Watch on the Rhine (1943)
15 ERNEST HEMINGWAY (novelist; 1899–1961) The Spanish Earth (1937); The Old Man and the Sea (1956)
16 ALDOUS HUXLEY (novelist and essayist; 1894–1956) Pride and Prejudice (1940); Jane Eyre (1944); A Woman’s
