During the filming of Dark Passage, Lauren Bacall had hurt the feelings of cameraman, Sid Hickox after of a comment made about the way he filmed one of the scenes. So director Delmer Daves decided to show Bacall that she knew less about film making than she was beginning to believe.
“I decided to teach Betty a lesson. We lined up for her last scene in the film- one in which Bogie is suposed to telephone her from a bus depot and she gets the call in her apartment. Since it was an important scene, she was anticipating a big close-up, but I told her we were going to photograph her from the back so that the audience could imagine what was going on in her mind. ‘With my back to the camera?’ she said. Tears came into her eyes, but she was a great sport about it and rehearsed it, even though her voice was trembling and she was fighting to hold back the tears. That broke me up and I relented. ‘For God’s sake, Betty, we’re lit for the front,’ I told her . ‘I just wanted to teach you a lesson because you were so cruel to Sid’ ‘I know I was.’ Tears started to come into her eyes, which was just perfect, and that’s how we shot the scene. A few minutes later Bogie came on the set. He saw her sobbing and followed her to her dressing room. When it was time for him to come on set, he had on his great Bogie face- no emotion. Usually, he was a one-take actor, but this time he kept blowing his lines and apologizing. We finally got the scene after eight takes and Bogie came over and said ‘I’m sorry about letting you down but you know what was bothering me. Betty told me what happened, and the kid can still break me up. But I think you did the right thing. Maybe she was getting a bit too big in the britches.’ “-Delmer Daves, director of Dark Passage.
(via gregorypecks)