She couldn't quite recall the details, but Shelley Winters clearly recalled that her final day of shooting on "The Poseidon Adventure" was not one of her happier moments.
"I don't remember why, but I was furious at Gene Hackman," Winters told TV critics. "Maybe I was furious because I was dying and I was going to be finished with the picture. But I was beyond sanity."
("The Poseidon Adventure" is profiled in AMC's "Backstory," which goes behind the making of various "classic" films. It airs Saturday at 3:30 and 10 p.m.; the movie itself airs at 1:15, 4 and 10:30 p.m.)
The director of "Poseidon," Ronald Neame, however, remembered exactly what happened and said that it was just one in a series of events involving the cast of the special-effects film.
"Each one of them had their temperament about once every 10 days," he said. "Well, that's fine. But it was one a day for me."
And last of all came Winters. "She did blow her top," Neame said. While the actress couldn't quite remember why, the director remembered quite clearly.
According to Neame (and Winters agreed), she had accepted the part based on her final scene. It called for her to beg Hackman's character to be allowed to dive in the water to save the survivors of the capsized luxury liner because she had been an expert swimmer. But Hackman didn't like the way the scene was set up.
"Gene comes to me about four days before we're going to shoot it and says, 'Ronnie, I would never let that lady go into that water. I've been leading them all the way through the film. And now, suddenly, I let her do that? No way,' " Neame said. "I said, 'Well, you have a point, Gene. But what do we do? What's Shelley going to say?' "
So Hackman suggested that his character dive in, get stuck and be rescued by Winters' character.
"Well, of course, it made perfect sense," Neame said. "Also, incidentally, I think it gave Shelley the scene. But at that particular moment, Shelley was convinced that we were destroying her part."
She complained that Hackman was stealing the scene from her.
"That was when we got into this terrible situation and I made a fatal mistake," the director said. "I said, 'This is the worst morning I've had since I directed Judy Garland.'
"And Shelley said, 'That's enough,' and got up and left."
"I decided I had to talk to the head of the studio," Winters said. "I've never before or since left a set."
So — totally soaked and covered with mud — she marched up to the office of the president of Fox studios and pushed her way in over the objections of his secretary.
"I went in, and the entire board of directors, 10 or 12 men, was in the office staring at me. And (the Fox president) said, 'We'll discuss this later.' I wrung out my dress a little and went back to the set."
And nothing ever came of it.
More than a quarter of a century later, Neame isn't holding any grudges. Even at the time, he understood that "Poseidon Adventure" was not an easy movie for the actors.
"I did have a wonderful cast, and I really mean wonderful," Neame said. "They went through misery day after day."
Before shooting began, the cast had to be wet down and covered in dirt. And, as the director acknowledged, "I was nicely dressed, and I didn't have water poured on me."
And he also had to referee disputes among the actors.
"Gene Hackman claimed that I was trying to drown him," Winters said. "I have very good breath — or I did then — so I took a long time freeing him. . . . And when we got to the top (of the water), he said, 'You are trying to drown me.'"
TALKING UNDER WATER? Winters is loquacious now, and apparently she was back when she was making "The Poseidon Adventure."
"There was one other remark that might be worth reminding Shelley about," Neame said. "It's apocryphal, of course, but Red Buttons is supposed to have said that Shelley nearly drowned trying to talk under water."
LOVING JUDY: Despite what he said that made Winters so mad, Neame insisted that he really "loved" Judy Garland.
"I really mean it," said the man who directed her last film, "I Could Go On Singing." "When we finished the very last shot of the film she said very quietly to the whole unit, 'You'll miss me when I'm gone.'
"And, by golly, we did miss her."
He said that he didn't have trouble with Garland — at least not more than half the time they worked together.
"It was a love-hate relationship. When she loved me, it was, 'We're all right, pussy cat, aren't we?' And I'd say, 'We're alright, Judy darling,' and I'd hug her," Neame said. "When she hated me, which was nearly half the time, she would say, 'Get that (expletive) British Henry Hathaway off the set!' Henry Hathaway had the reputation of being a bit of a bully."
E-MAIL: pierce@desnews.com