on set feuds

[GRAEME]

After several films over several decades together, John Ford socked Henry Fonda on the jaw on the set of Mister Roberts.

Ford also goaded Jimmy Cagney on that film, to the point that Cagney wanted to hit him.

[dremble wedge]

On the big screen I'm aware that Richard Harris and Michael Caine couldn't abide one another, but I don't recall seeing them together in anything.

They were cast together in Play Dirty in 1968, but Harris didn't last long and was replaced by Nigel Davenport (who went on to steal the film).

[CaptainWaggett]

I seem to think we've covered this topic elsewhere, but there are several examples so far not mentioned on this thread:

Polarised politics often played its part - e.g. Leonard Rossiter v Frances De La Tour on the set of "Rising Damp" or Arthur Lowe v Clive Dunn during filming of "Dad's Army".

There wasn't much love lost between Steptoe (Wilfrid Brambell) and Son (Harry H. Corbett)

And the rift between Likely Lads James Bolam and Rodney Bewes is the stuff of TV legend...

On the big screen I'm aware that Richard Harris and Michael Caine couldn't abide one another, but I don't recall seeing them together in anything.

I thought the rift between Bewes and Bolam didn't start until after they'd stopped working together and nobody who actually worked with Brambell and Corbett has suggested they didn't get on (it would be interesting to know when the story first appears) Did Dunn and Lowe actually feud on-set? (See also Michael Bates and Bill Owen who don't seem to have been best friends but who presumably got on OK at work, just as we all have to with uncogenial colleagues ).

One feud not mentioned (not exactly blows but more of a 'feeling') is Upstairs vs Downstairs where it seems that the Upstairs characters did get a bit involved in their characters and expected the Downstairs-folk to help them with their coats and find them chairs etc. The Downstairs people got their own back since they had 'proper' food in their sets which they didn't share with Upstairs whose food was all prop glazed partridges etc. I wonder if it's the same at Downton Abbey?

[Rindulus]

Werner Herzog, his apparent best mate, seemed to have a strange dichotomy about him too.....

Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski during filming of "Fitzcarraldo" apparantly came to blows. The story goes Kinski threatened to walk at which point Herzog produced a gun and threatened to shoot him if he did. This may be balderdash but Kinski was notoriously difficult.

Some years later Herzog was actually shot while filming an interview with film critic Mark Kermode the clip is on youtube

[Tigon Man]

As has been discussed in the past on these threads, Ronald Lewis and John Fraser in the Wind Cannot Read (1958). JF in his gossipy autobiography 'Close Up' says that Ronnie Lewis disliked location filming for this movie in India and took exception to JF's friendship with a local girl working as a tour guide. This culminated in Ronnie sticking one on JF and breaking his jaw.

JF alleged that Ronnie was a bully who deliberately targeted smaller slightly built men (he also thumped David McCallum in an earlier movie) and gay actors.


It makes you wonder if the stories are to be believed, why Ronnie Lewis wasn't sacked from the various productions? These incidents don't seem to have effected his career unduly at the time, and he continued making movies and appearing on TV until his sad decline in the late seventies.

In his defence others spoke highly of RL, including Kenneth Williams who after RL's suicide in January 1982 remembered working with him in Twice Round The Daffodils (1962).