Scaramouche (1952 film)

Lewis Stone also played the villain, the Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr, in the 1923 silent version.

The studio planned to adapt the novel in late 1938, with production set to commence in early 1939, though pre-production did not start until 1950.[2]

Initially, the film was meant to be an MGM musical starring Gene Kelly, with Ava Gardner as Lenore and Elizabeth Taylor co-starring as Aline before it was changed to more of a swashbuckling adventure film.[3] Their commitments to the film were confirmed in early 1951.[2] At one point, other than Kelly, Fernando Lamas and Ricardo Montalbán were also considered for the lead.[2]

"I always felt that Scaramouche should have been a musical", said George Sidney. "It would have needed the most crafty score but it could have been terribly exciting."[4]

However, when Stewart Granger was contracted by the studio after his success in King Solomon's Mines, one of his stipulations was that he star in the then-upcoming Scaramouche project.[3][5]

Ava Gardner was announced as Granger's co-star.[6] Ricardo Montalbán was signed to play the Marquis de Maynes, the villain.[7]

Talbot Jennings wrote the first script, Casey Wilson was assigned as producer and George Sidney as director.[8]

Eventually Montalban was dropped and it was announced Granger would play both the hero and the villain.[9] Elizabeth Taylor was mentioned as a female lead in addition to Gardner.[10]

Granger was then cast in Constable Pedley (later called The Wild North) which required location filming in snow. This meant he left Scaramouche entirely; Montalban returned to the film as the hero, and Fernando Lamas was cast as the villain.[11] Granger went on to shoot part of The Wild North, then production was halted. He made The Light Touch, and then completed The Wild North. MGM then decided to reassign him to Scaramouche, with Lamas staying on as the villain.[12]

Gardner and Taylor became unavailable for casting and were replaced by Eleanor Parker and Janet Leigh. Mel Ferrer replaced Fernando Lamas as de Maynes.

Sidney had Parker dye her hair red for the film.[4]

Granger, who performed most of his stunts himself, took fencing lessons with Jean Heremans when preparing for the role.[3] The 8-minute-long duel in the theater between Granger and Ferrer took eight weeks of preparation, including memorizing eighty-seven fencing passes.[3] Filming this scene left Granger with a wrenched knee, a damaged shoulder, and an injured back.[3] Other accidents on set included Jean Simmons – who was visiting her husband Granger – almost receiving a sword in her face, and a chandelier hitting a mattress upon which Granger was supposed to lie and embedding itself in the stage.[13] Fortunately for Granger, he insisted on seeing the chandelier dropped once before shooting the scene.[3]

Nina Foch, who appeared as Marie Antoinette, wore the same costume as Norma Shearer in MGM's 1938 film.

Eleanor Parker later said that Stewart Granger was the only person in her career that she did not get along with:

It wasn't a conflict between the two of us. Everyone disliked this man ... Stewart Granger was a dreadful person, rude ... just awful. Just being in his presence was bad. I thought at one point the crew was going kill him. Jean visited him on the set and would leave his dressing room in tears. He humiliated her. It was terrible. All of the dueling scenes in Scaramouche were wonderful, though. I'll give Granger credit for that. He didn't know how to do any of that, but worked hard and learned. Mel Ferrer, his counterpart in the movie, was extremely adept at the swordplay, but was a gentleman. He could have taken advantage and upstaged Granger, the star, but he never did.[14]

Eleanor Parker's perception of the fencing in Scaramouche appears to be mistaken. According to Mel Ferrer:

I'd been playing a lot of goody-goodys, making pictures for Metro; and they asked me to do this one. They asked me if I fenced, and I told them, "No." They said, "We thought you were a fencer." And I said, "No, I'm a dancer." They said, "So, what do we do about that?" I said, "It's very simple. I'll learn to fence the way a dancer would learn a routine. If I were learning a ballet, I'd learn it by number. One, two, three, four ... four, you're on this spot; five, six, seven, you do that; that's the way you learn choreography." And I learned how to fence in six weeks.

We did seven duels in the picture, and each one was different; we never repeated a sequence. And that's like learning seven ballets; it's very, very difficult ...

Jimmy [Stewart Granger] knew how to fence already. He'd been in the theater in England, and that's part of the training for actors on the London stage; they learn to fence. They learn how to ride, most all of them learn how to ride horseback. They're so much more developed as performers than we are; they get so much better training.[15]

Bosley Crowther wrote in his New York Times review, "A cheekier attitude toward romance and a great deal more play with the swords [than the 1923 version] are in this latter-day whip-up, and these are the things that make it fun. ... A little bit slow in getting started—a little bit on the pompous side, with a few rather efflorescent speeches and solemn respects to the queen—the business gets moving in earnest when the leading swashbucklers first cross swords and keeps moving, ever more gaily, until the end of their big climactic duel."[16]

The film earned $2,739,000 at the North American box office in its first year of release.[17] MGM records put its foreign earnings at $4,007,000, and overall the movie made a profit of $1,062,000.[1] The movie was particularly popular in France, with admissions of 2,975,521.[18]