I was reading a biography of Paulette Goddard and it recounted how some scurrilous gossip about her and a film director (believed to be Anatole Litvak) and their rather explicit behavior at the famous L.A. restaurant, Ciro’s, emerged just at the time Goddard’s newest film, NORTH WEST MOUNTED POLICE (1940), directed in Technicolor by Cecil B. DeMille, had its big Hollywood preview with a lot of industry people in the audience. Seduction scenes between Goddard, as a half-French, half-Indian hottie working for the bad guys, and Robert Preston as a Canadian Mountie, drew uproarious laughter and loud retorts from the audience. When Preston says to her, "nobody, nothing could ever make me let you go," someone shouted "Not even the headwaiter!" DeMille wisely moved the next preview far from L.A. and the “strictly local” gossip and it went well and the film became a huge boxoffice hit.

So I got to thinking what other initial screenings were like this and all I could come up with were the New York premiere of Michael Cimino’s HEAVEN’S GATE (1980) and, maybe a little outside Hollywood, the Venice Film Festival screening in 2013 of Jonathan Glazer’s UNDER THE SKIN (2014).

HEAVEN’S GATE:

I remember reading a gossip item about this the very next day in the New York Post. The film was pulled from theaters after a week and re-released in 1981 in a severely cut version, but the damage was done and the film nearly bankrupted United Artists.

UNDER THE SKIN:

I don’t recall how well the film did. After seeing it for the first time recently, I can’t imagine it finding much of an audience when it came out.

What other films had openings like this? There must be dozens of stories like these. I imagine some of them overcame the initial publicity and did well, while others simply tanked.



NORTH WEST MOUNTED POLICE with Robert Preston, Paulette Goddard, Gary Cooper


Kris Kristofferson, Michael Cimino on the set of HEAVEN'S GATE



Scarlett Johansson in UNDER THE SKIN (2014)

Someone on another forum reminded me of Orson Welles' THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (1942), which got recut after a disastrous provincial preview screening far from Hollywood, and SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950), which caused Billy Wilder to cut out an opening scene at a morgue involving corpses's voice-over after a preview audience laughed at it.

Didn't Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me get booed at Canne? I think people were expecting resolutions to the series.

I don't know if it was a premier, but I envy the certain crowd who got to see Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man complete with Bela Lugosi's dialogue. If you're unfamiliar, this film was keeping the continuity of having Ygor's brain into the Frankenstein monster (From the previous film, Ghost of Frankenstein) but, reportedly, audiences couldn't stop laughing at the sound of Bela Lugosi's voice coming out of the monster.

Universal panicked and quickly deleted all of Lugosi's lines and made the monster mute. If you look closely at the final film, you'll spot a few moments where Lugosi is clearly mouthing some words onscreen.

Yeah, I would love to see that. I imagine no print of it was saved after they made the re-edit.