“Hollywood Film Shop”
Greensburg Daily Tribune – Aug. 29, 1952
By: Charles M. Denton
(United Press Correspondent)
HOLLYWOOD (U.P.) – Movie producers, accustomed to tossing about astronomical financial
figures, shuddered a little when Samuel Goldwyn picked up the final bill for his
production of “Hans Christian Andersen.”
It came to $4,000,000.
For the benefit of
those who couldn’t understand how anything made out of celluloid could possibly cost
so much money—even with Danny Kaye—Goldwyn revealed a few of the bills he ran up
making the film version of the life of the famed Danish story-
Talent—Kaye,
Farley Granger and a new dancing discovery, Jeanmaire—and the cost of making the
sets added up to a high figure and Goldwyn also found himself with bills like $14,500
for shoes.
The reason for the high shoe bill was that each member of a large troupe
of ballet dancers wore out at least one pair of dancing slippers each day.
In Rehearsal 90 Days
The company rehearsed more than 90 days and the shoes cost $10
a pair.
There was a little item of $1,000,000 for the story, although “Hans Christian
Andersen” was an original story conceived by Goldwyn himself.
However, after the first
version of the story was written in 1937, 22 of Hollywood best—and most expensive—writers
took cracks at improving it.
The playwright Moss Hart completed it in 1951.
A sprained
ankle cost the studio another $30,000, principally because it happened to Jeanmaire
and forced Goldwyn to suspend production for five days.
The most arresting item on
the long bill reads: “Haircut, $1,000.”
That went to eight-