Trivia / Touch of Evil

• All-Star Cast: Charlton Heston, Orson Welles, Janet Leigh, and Marlene Dietrich, plus cameos from Joseph Cotten and Zsa Zsa Gabor. This is especially weird when you consider that Touch Of Evil was released as a B-Movie.
• Billing Displacement: Marlene Dietrich and Zsa Zsa Gabor share a title card ("Guest Starring Marlene Dietrich, Zsa Zsa Gabor"). Gabor has a bit part; she is onscreen for 20 seconds at most. Dietrich has a larger role and appears in four crucial scenes including the finale.
• California Doubling: Sorta. While it depicts life on the California/Mexico border, most scenes were filmed in Venice, California, about 140 miles away.
• Completely Different Title:
  • In Sweden, the film was called "En djävulsk fälla", meaning "A Devilish Trap".
  • In Italy its name was given as "L'infernale Quinlan" which is obviously translated as "The infernal Quinlan".
• Creator-Chosen Casting:
  • Orson Welles cast Janet Leigh as Susan Vargas. Before her agent had notified her of the casting, Welles contacted Leigh via telegram stating how delighted he was to work with her on the film. She contacted her agent, and accepted the part.
  • Welles cast Dennis Weaver as the Night Manager because he was a fan of Gunsmoke.
  • Welles cast Mercedes McCambridge as a hoodlum, having known her since their days at the Mercury Theatre.
• Creator's Favorite: According to a September 4, 1960, New York Times article, Marlene Dietrich considered the role of Tanya one of her favorites and claimed that she did her "best dramatic acting" in the last scene, in which she declares, "What does it matter what you say about people?"
• Directed By Castmember: Funnily enough, Orson Welles was initially offered to only act in the film, but when Charlton Heston demanded that Welles direct, the studios offered him the director's chair as long as he wouldn't get paid for the writing or directing, only for his original salary as an actor.
• Doing It for the Art:
  • Janet Leigh's agent initially rejected her participation in this film due to the low salary offered without even consulting the actress. Orson Welles, anticipating this, sent a personal letter to the actress, telling her how much he looked forward to their working together. Leigh, furious, confronted her agent telling him that getting directed by Welles was more important than any paycheck.
  • Marlene Dietrich filmed her part in one day as a personal favor to Welles and he had not told anyone about it. She agreed to appear at minimum union wage, but when the studio execs decided to give her on-screen credit, they had to pay her more.
• Dyeing for Your Art:
  • Orson Welles had Mercedes McCambridge's hair cut and applied black shoe polish over her newly trim hair and eyebrows.
  • Joanna Moore was required to dye her hair brown so as to differentiate her from Janet Leigh.
• Enforced Method Acting: Janet Leigh claimed to be absolutely terrified when she shot the scene where she is menaced in her motel room.
• Executive Meddling:
  • The film was made under budget and on schedule, but the studio still took it from Welles's control and re-edited it, cutting some scenes out and reshooting others. When asked about this in the BBC documentary, "The Orson Welles Story", Welles admits he had no idea why this happened as the studio loved the rushes he was sending in, and he can only guess that his cut was too modern and dark for them. In the same documentary, Heston speculates that Welles' ego probably rubbed the studio heads the wrong way and them taking control of it was petty payback.
  • Heston claimed afterward that he convinced the studio executives that he'd star in the movie only because he thought Welles was the director, when the studio only hired him to act as Quinlan (in truth, Welles and the producer had already agreed to let him direct the movie based on the Badge of Evil novel/script).
• Fake Nationality:
  • American Charlton Heston plays Mexican police officer Miguel Vargas. He plays him well, but still, come on — it's just a tan and a Mexican mustache and Not Even Bothering with the Accent (which Heston later admitted was a huge mistake).
  • The cast is full of Fakes — Armenian actor Akim Tamiroff plays a Mexican gangster, German-American Marlene Dietrich plays a Spanish Gypsy fortune teller and neither of them affect accents either.
• Looping Lines: Orson Welles dubbed Joseph Cotten's line, "Now you can strain him through a sieve."
• Old Shame: While Charlton Heston didn't hate the film, he felt that playing a Mexican while being an American was one of his biggest mistakes as an actor.
• Referenced by...:
  • Ed Wood has a scene of Ed Wood meeting Orson Welles, and Welles comments on how "they want Charlton Heston playing a Mexican".
  • Get Shorty has John Travolta's character enjoying the film in a small repertory theater and afterward he and Rene Russo's character playfully imitate the closing scene.
• Screwed by the Network: Universal released this film as part of a B-Movie double bill with no advertising or press promotion, despite it boasting two of the biggest stars of the day — Charlton Heston and Janet Veigh. They really didn't want the film to succeed at all — when a Belgian employee arranged for it to be exhibited at the 1958 Brussels World Film Festival, where it received tons of praise including the International Critic's Award, said employee was fired.
• Throw It In!: In a scene featured a shot of Orson Welles smoking, a piece of paper accidentally blew by in front of him. It was kept in at his request.
• Uncredited Role: Joseph Cotten makes an uncredited cameo as a coroner.
• Underage Casting: Orson Welles transformed himself with 30kg of body prosthetics and make-up, along with a fake nose, to play a man twenty years older than himself.
• What Could Have Been: Orson Welles originally wanted Lloyd Bridges for Menzies. The studio refused, and instead cast veteran actor Joseph Calleia. Welles was pleased with this new choice, because he had seen Calleia on stage as a child and thought he was very talented.
• Working Title: Borderline.
• Write What You Know:
  • Orson Welles was said to have based the drug scenes on his own experiences, with the Grandi kids' use of marijuana symbolizing his own indifference towards the legality of the drug, and the violent use of heroin representing his feeling that anything harder than that was just "suicide", as he once put it.
  • Quinlan's racism and brutality was in part inspired by the blinding of Isaac Woodard by a Southern police officer, a case which Welles helped bring national attention to through his radio commentaries.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Orson Welles would often rewrite his script during his lunch breaks, meaning it was pointless for the actors to keep learning their lines.
• Written-In Infirmity: Janet Leigh broke her left arm before filming commenced but appeared nonetheless. The arm was in a cast, hidden from the camera, for many scenes. In the more revealing motel scenes, the cast was removed for filming and reapplied afterwards.

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