Here’s why Otto Preminger found himself directing the great classic “Laura” instead of Rouben Mamoulian.
Laura is broadcast this evening on ARTE. The aim of the film is simple: find who killed advertising executive Laura Hunt. Inspector Mark McPherson leads the investigation and interrogates Lydecker, who considers that Laura owes him everything. But did you know that the original director was simply ousted from the project?
At the time, the boss of Twentieth Century Fox, Darryl F. Zanuck, hated the director Otto Preminger. Mobilized by the army, Zanuck was forced to hand over the reins of his studio to his vice-president William Goetz, who accepted a new project from Preminger: a film based on the novel Laura by Vera Caspary.
Like Laura, these very good films are less than 90 minutes long!
A furious producer
Twentieth Century Fox Dana Andrews
Furious, when he returned, Zanuck maintained the project but entrusted the direction to Rouben Mamoulian and gave Otto Preminger the status of producer. Mamoulian begins to rewrite the script signed by Preminger and his authors, while the producer and director each negotiate their casting choices.
Dana Andrews plays the male lead, while Gene Tierney is cast in the female lead. For the occasion, she reunites with Mamoulian, with whom she filmed the comedy Rings on Her Fingers two years previously.
Dissonant tone
Twentieth Century Fox
The first clap sounded on April 22, 1944, but after 18 days of filming, Preminger and Zanuck, by mutual agreement, agreed that Rouben Mamoulian’s direction was not suitable for the film. Otto Preminger took the reins of the film on May 15 by removing from the film the painting of Laura painted by Azadia Newman, Mamoulian’s wife.
The film was then completed smoothly, and grossed $2 million on a budget of just over $1 million. It is today considered one of the great classics of cinema and the “film noir” genre, rated 4.2 out of 5 by AlloCiné spectators.
Twentieth Century Fox
Despite the strangeness of the situation on Laura, Otto Preminger will reunite with Dana Andrews for Crime of Passion (1945) and Woman or Mistress (1947) and Gene Tierney for The Mysterious Doctor Korvo (1950) and Storm in Washington with Henry Fonda and Charles Laughton ( 1962). He even brought together Laura’s two heroes in the detective film Mark Dixon, Detective, released in 1950.