12 Spectacular Cons Directors Pulled Off Shooting A Movie

4. John Ford Trolls A Hungover Vince McLagen To Oscar Glory €“ The Informer

The Infomer Unsurprisingly for the man who once made Shirley Temple cry more effectively on camera by telling her that her someone had ran over her dog, John Ford could be a bit bonkers with how he wrung the last bit of talent out of his actors. Yet strangely, this was always a good thing €“ Temple never performed better than when she teamed up with Ford for Wee Willie Winkie and the later Fort Apache. Though this brand of lunacy didn€™t win an award for Temple, Ford had already struck Oscar gold for an earlier effort from her Apache co-star, Victor McLaglen. Effectively, all the way through filming this 1935 Northern Ireland-set drama, Ford acting like a massive tool to McLaglen in order to enhance the man€™s surly demeanour. In fact, if this happened in modern times, the only explanation you could give was that Ford was effectively trolling him. Honestly, I€™m not kidding €“ he€™d change the shoot schedule at the last minute, often when McLaglen was already on the lot, and inform the actor mid-take that his effort-filled performance didn€™t matter because they weren€™t filming. Yet the most colossal dick move Ford managed was to tell McLaglen when he had days off, only to rescind those breaks the morning they started. Now much like everybody at the time McLaglen was a man€™s man, and loved himself a drink and a party. So obviously the man€™s going to be nursing a hangover in his mornings off, while sleeping under a blanket of naked women as befitting his status as a war veteran, hard man and movie star. Yet Ford would still drag his sullen corpse out of bed and make him act, even when he was filled with nausea. But McLaglen can€™t really complain €“ the performance did net him the Best Actor Oscar.
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Durham University graduate and qualified sports journalist. Very good at sitting down and watching things. Can multi-task this with playing computer games. Football Manager addict who has taken Shrewsbury Town to the summit of the Premier League. You can follow me at @Ed_OwenUK, if you like ramblings about Newcastle United and A Place in the Sun. If you don't, I don't know what I can do for you.