Remember my deal? Look at the stars and then listen to me talk about myself. This, by the way, is a behind the scenes look at the shooting of “The Lady Eve”. The device the gentleman is holding in front of Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda is a light meter. What a nice clean set that is…
Once upon a time, on a very grungy set, a set in an abandoned industrial building beneath a bridge in downtown Los Angeles (that was coated with decades of filthy, cloying, dust) yours truly was hard at work. It had fallen to me to wrangle the hero prop in a scene that involved plastic crucifixes being fed onto a conveyer belt and sent by a lead actor. The actor was then to pluck said crucifix from the conveyer belt and hide it under his coat. Easy! Well, it was easy for the actor. I, on the other hand, had to crawl under the conveyer belt through an opening in the wall that only I could fit through into a empty, dirty, cavern of a room hauling a crate of crucifixes behind me.
And, there I sat, take after take, listening to the prompts of the first AD and the Director (roll sound, roll camera, speed, clap, action) setting out crucifix after crucifix on the decayed, wheezing, conveyer belt… All the action was going on in the other room. I listened to the voices of the crew as dust motes drifted through shafts of grimy light and wondered how many takes I’d have to share with the beetles and other assorted species. At one point my beloved, on set, in the other room – shouted out, “Vickie! Vickie where are you!” Now, it should have been apparent to everyone on set that the conveyer belt was not miraculously moving, or being set with gleaming crucifixes at regular intervals, on its own. However, the future Mister was inquiring as to my whereabouts…
“I’m right here with the dead rats, the same mummified rats that I have to crawl over every time I load up the conveyer belt (indeterminate sputtering) I’m right here!”
I vowed then and there to make his life miserable. I married him. Mission accomplished.
