Trivia / The Prince and the Showgirl

• Blooper: Elsie can be heard calling Charles "Laurence" by mistake around forty minutes into the film.
• Colbert Bump: Many modern viewers only know of the movie from My Week with Marilyn dramatising the making of it.
• Directed by Cast Member: Laurence Olivier directed and played the lead.
• Hostility on the Set: Famously between Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe. The former was a contractually obligated director and actor, so she was unable to remove him, and they repeatedly clashed throughout the production.
• Mid-Development Genre Shift: The film was planned as a musical, but Arthur Miller persuaded Marilyn Monroe to have the songs removed.
• Throw It In!: When she discovered that Laurence Olivier had the crew taking bets on how many takes she'd need to finish a scene, Marilyn Monroe studied and prepared intensively. She said her line, left the room and closed the door as planned. Then she popped her head back in the door to say "pretty good huh?" and closed it again. As that extra bit fit her character and the tone of the scene, they left it in.
• Troubled Production: As dramatized in My Week with Marilyn, the film was marred with difficulties between Marilyn Monroe and her co-stars and the production team. According to Jean Kent, Monroe regularly failed to arrive on set on time and appeared dishevelled. She was reported to have caused her co-star Richard Wattis, who had a lot of scenes with her, to take up drinking "because takes had to be done so many times" and had an uneasy relationship with the normally quiet and placid cinematographer Jack Cardiff, who in turn said that Laurence Olivier referred to her as a "bitch". There was also her not doing anything at all without consulting her acting coach, Paula Strasberg; Olivier, famous for his dislike of the method acting that Monroe and Strasberg used, ordered Strasberg off the set at one point, which led Monroe to refuse to continue shooting until she was restored. In turn, Monroe never forgave him for, when asking him about directions, telling her "try and be sexy". Kent states that the difficulties with filming and Monroe caused Olivier "to age 15 years." Olivier for his part never directed another movie for ten years until he did an adaptation of Chekov's "Uncle Vanya".
• Uncredited Role: Cyril Chamberlain as an extra.
• What Could Have Been: Vivien Leigh was considered to reprise her role as Elsie Marina, which she had played on the stage alongside her husband. It was decided that she was too old at 43, and Marilyn Monroe was cast.

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