Daisy Miller (film)

Peter Bogdanovich had a production deal with The Directors Company at Paramount Studios under which he could make whatever film he wanted provided it was under a certain budget. This company was the idea of Charles Bluhdorn, chairman of Gulf and Western, who owned Paramount at the time. Peter Bart, then working at Paramount, remembers:

Bogdanovich called me soon after completing Paper Moon to tell me he was going to introduce me to a filmmaker whose work the company should next foster. He appeared a day later in the presence of Orson Welles, corpulent and glowering, who, at the time, was neither young nor promising... Bogdanovich felt Welles had one more Citizen Kane in him; the other directors disagreed, as did I. Welles and Bogdanovich had formed a bond, however, and during their lengthy conversations, Welles had spoken glowingly of a novel by Henry James called Daisy Miller, which he felt was a romantic classic. Bogdanovich, who was making a habit at the time of falling in love, heard Welles' comments in the context of a potential film. My instinct was that he was simply urging Bogdanovich to read the novel; an erudite man, Welles' literary recommendations were definitely worth listening to. To my surprise, however, Bogdanovich instantly started prepping a movie based on Daisy Miller to star his girlfriend Cybill Shepherd -- an idea that did not stir much enthusiasm within the Directors' Company. At the time, I recall telling myself, this company won't be around for long. The prediction proved to be correct.[4]

Bogdanovich's other partners in the Directors Company were Francis Ford Coppola and William Friedkin. Friedkin later wrote that Coppola "remained neutral" on the idea of making Daisy Miller but Friedkin was opposed. "I told Peter he shouldn't make it for our company. We had promised Bludhorn "commercial" films."[5] However Bogdanovich went ahead anyway. Friedkin later said he was encouraged to do this by Frank Yablans of Paramount, who never liked the idea of the Directors Company and wanted it to fail.[5]

Bogdanovich later recalled:

I thought that it would not be a very commercial picture, but I thought we'd made three in a row; what's wrong with making one that wasn't so commercial? This is not a good way to think. [LAUGH] Howard Hawks had warned me, "Peter, make pictures that make money", is what he said. It seems fairly obvious, but I should have listened to him... My partners, [Francis Ford] Coppola and [William] Friedkin, were annoyed that I made it 'cause they saw it as a vanity production from my girlfriend. I thought it was rather a touching story. In retrospect, I should have probably done Rambling Rose which was a possibility at that time.[6]

Bogdanovich later said he asked Orson Welles to direct Cybill Shepherd and Bogdanovich in the lead roles but Welles refused:

He encouraged me to do it which maybe was a double-edged sword but anyway Barry Brown was so right for the part that it was scary. But it was also a problem because he just wasn't very personable and the part needed somebody with a little more personality, but y'know, he was the part, he sure was Winterbourne. Poor Barry. He killed himself really, with booze... He had a kind of intelligence and he was a very bright kid but he was so self-destructive. But he was very much like Winterbourne, he was definitely "winter born."[1]

The film started shooting on 20 August 1973.[7] Production took place on location in Rome and Vevey in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland. Larry McMurtry's son had a support role.[8] During the shoot Rex Reed visited the set and wrote a hostile piece on the director and star.[9]

Bogdanovich said later, "I remember watching dailies of Daisy Miller in Rome or Switzerland and thinking to myself, saying out loud, "This is beautiful, but I don't know who's going to want to see it." And boy, was I right. Don't forget, this was before the Merchant Ivory (Merchant Ivory Productions)."[6]

Bogdanovich later recalls his partners at the Directors Company were not happy with the film:

They thought it was a kind of a vanity production to show Cybill off. If I'd wanted to do that I would have done something else. That was a pretty difficult role, and I thought she was awfully good in it. What some people didn't realize is that that was the way a girl like that would have been in 1875. She was from New York, she was a provincial girl. If you read the story that's what she is. If you read the original novel we hardly added anything. The movie is exactly the book. I added one sequence that I wrote that Freddy Raphael had nothing to do with. In fact Freddy Raphael had nothing to do with that script, it was so funny. There's two things he wrote. One idea was the little miniature painter and the other thing was having that scene play in the baths... Everything else was the book and I couldn't use his script cause it was really way over the top. Anyway, that's another story. We went to arbitration in England cause Freddy's English and so they were a little partial to him. They said I could have billing but it would have to say "Additional Dialogue by", and I said I'm not going to give myself that.[1]

When the film was completed Bogdanovich recalls showing it to studio executives:

Yablans, the new head of the studio came over to me and I said "What do you think?" He said, "It's all right." I said "Is that all you have to say?" "Well what do you want me to say?" I said, "It's just all right?" He said, "It's fine, it's good but you are Babe Ruth and you just bunted." From a commercial point of view he was right. It was not a picture that was ever going to be a big hit unless you released it today. It got very good notices. People remember it as having gotten bad notices but the truth is that Paper Moon got fairly mixed notices. The New York Times didn't like it, Time didn't like it. On the other hand The New York Times raved about Daisy Miller, but it was just not a commercial picture in its day plus at that point Paramount changed hands, Barry Diller came in, Frank was out, it fell between the cracks, and nobody really pushed it. I like the picture. I think it was pretty daring.[1]