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Behind the Camera on THE DEFIANT ONES
After Sidney Poitier began collaborating with Kramer and the screenwriters on the script, the next step was finding the right actor to play Joker. Kramer wanted Marlon Brando, but for whatever reason, that didn't work out. Tony Curtis knew he wasn't the first choice for the role (Kirk Douglas was considered for the part), but he wanted the part badly. He saw it as a chance to escape the pretty-boy adventure epics that had made him a box office favorite. In fact, he believed in the movie so much, he helped raise the $1 million budget through Curtleigh, the production company he had formed with his wife Janet Leigh. With both roles cast and funding secured, The Defiant Ones was was ready to begin production.
Sidney Poitier came to the set of The Defiant Ones with a great deal of respect and admiration for Stanley Kramer. "Stanley was always a forerunner of terribly good things; He was the type of man who found it essential to put on the line the things that were important to him," the actor told Donald Spoto, author of the biography Stanley Kramer: Film Maker (Samuel French, 1990). "People have short memories: in the days he started making films about important social issues, there were powerful Hollywood columnists who could break careers. He knew this, and he said to himself, 'What the hell', either I do it or I can't live with myself.' For that attitude, we're all in Stanley Kramer's debt. He's an example of the very best of a certain type of filmmaker."
Tony Curtis also strongly believed in Kramer and the project, even though he often felt that the director showed favoritism to Poitier. "Because of the racial climate of the time, he went out of his way to be more agreeable to Sidney," the actor said in his book Tony Curtis: The Autobiography (Morrow, 1993). "I noticed that in his direction and his behavior. He never treated me with the same reverence he did Sidney. I wasn't mad about it. That's just the way it was. Sidney was a hell of a talent, no matter what color he was, and this was a time when Hollywood was just starting to realize maybe it could do something positive for civil rights."
Curtis, in fact, performed a very generous deed on Poitier's behalf. Because he was a much bigger star, Curtis was to be given full star billing, while Poitier's contract called for him to be listed with the other supporting players. Curtis went to Kramer and insisted that Poitier's name be given equal prominence with his. It was Poitier's first top billing in movies.
Both actors also had tremendous praise for the supporting cast. Curtis was particularly excited to be appearing with Carl Switzer, who had been a child star as Alfalfa in the "Our Gang" comedies that Curtis watched as a child. Curtis later said he loved listening to Switzer (an incessant poker-player) talk about being a kid actor in early Hollywood and how he had been swindled out of the money he made from that popular shorts series.
Despite the mutual admiration and camaraderie among the cast and crew, The Defiant Ones wasn't necessarily a breeze to shoot. It was physically exhausting for Curtis and Poitier, who had to run through fields, swamps, and woods and fight each other barefisted, all while being chained together. There was also the famous climactic run for the train. Most grueling of all were the scenes where the two chained men are swept down the rapids of a river and their desperate attempt to climb out of a deep clay pit during a rainstorm. Curtis said there were no doubles for the clay pit scene, which he deemed the hardest sequence in the film. He also said he had a stunt double for some of the water scenes while Poitier had a dummy as a stand-in for at least one shot - look for it, it's pretty obvious. However, most of the grueling stunt work was done by the two stars themselves.
by Rob Nixon
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