FLAMING STAR
– A Challenging Role for Presley –
(Part 3)
By Mariusz Ogieglo
The leading female role – Clint’s crush, Roslyn Pierce, was initially given to the “first lady of horror in Britain ” * British actress Barbara Steele. “There were close to two hundred actresses who would have given anything to play alongside Elvis, and the studio chose a tall, dark-haired Englishwoman named Barbara Steele ,” revealed the film’s director, Don Siegel, behind the scenes of the casting.
However, neither the director nor the producer of the film were happy with the choice of actress. According to David Weisbart, the British actress was not only “not a good actress ” but also had little experience in front of the camera. By 1960, she had appeared in only four films, of which her scenes in the 1959 drama “The Heart Of A Man” were simply cut.
However, casting director Owen McLean was trying hard to get her involved. To such an extent that, as some sources later reported, her involvement even became the subject of a heated exchange of words with Don Siegel. “(McLean, author’s note) He said that the only reason I didn’t like Barbara Steele was her black hair ,” the director explained years later. “I told him then that the only reason I didn’t want her in the movie was to protect Presley. She simply couldn’t do it. Besides, I was afraid of Elvis’s reaction if it turned out that he had to stand on an apple crate to look her straight in the eye .”
The situation seemed stalemate. No one, except the director and producer quoted above, seemed to even be bothered by Steele’s English accent, which was far from the American way of speaking, the way her film character should speak. The only thing Siegel managed to convince the creators of the new western was to allow the British actress to wear a blonde wig for the test shoot.
“At the time we protested, we were informed that the studio had already made an irrevocable decision ,” Siegel complained. “Miss Steele will star opposite Presley .” “My God! We’re dead already ,” Weisbart summed up the studio’s decision.
Ultimately, however, Barbara Steele left the cast of Presley’s new film after the first day of shooting (it was rumored behind the scenes that the decision to leave was sealed when Siegel and Weisbart handed over the daily dailies to studio executives).
Later, some websites reported that the actress “was replaced on the set of ‘Flaming Star’ by another after a conflict with director Don Siegel .” However, he denied this information in interviews. “I personally liked her ,” he said. “It was her fatal lack of experience, strange Western accent and height that proved to be her undoing .”
The director also remembers the moment when he had to inform her about the changes in the cast. “I was having lunch with Miss Steele in my trailer ,” he said in an interview. “I tried to be as gentle as I could. I explained to her that it was a mistake and that it was unfair to her .”The actress’s reaction, however, was said to have surprised him greatly. “To my surprise, she breathed a sigh of relief .” “I told Mr. McLean and the other managers that I felt very uncomfortable in the role ,” Steele reportedly stated. “I was glad that I was no longer involved in this film. I wanted to thank you and Mr. Weisbart for being so kind to me .”
Barbara Steele was replaced by Tucson, Arizona-born Barbara Eden (real name Barbara Jean Moorhead, author’s note). A twenty-nine-year-old film and television actress who made her big-screen debut in a small role in John Farrow’s drama Back From Eternity. “There was no doubt she would do a great job ,” Don Siegel praised the actress.
Eden also had one more advantage. Her southern accent was much more suited to the character she was creating than the way her British predecessor spoke. Although, as the film director recalled years later, the filmmakers had a slight problem with this actress. “Her film character lived in a small, isolated town ,”Siegel explained. “I thought her hair should be a bit more neglected. Meanwhile, she styled it very stylishly and with great care. Likewise, her clothes, which should have been simple because the hand-made ones looked expensive and were too perfectly fitted. Dressed in them, she looked much too good for a resident of this town of about twenty people .”
Siegel shared his observations with David Weisbart. After a brief discussion, the two decided not to change a thing. “At least she was considerably shorter than Elvis ,” Siegel said.
Barbara Eden joined the crew on the third day of filming. “My God, what a talent he was ,” the actress recalled of Presley. “I remember the first time I saw him. It was on TV. I had a dance sequence to do and one of the girls invited me over to her house to rehearse. And her sister ran in and said, ‘Look!’ ‘Look! Quick!’ It was the Ed Sullivan show and Elvis was just electrifying. I never forgot him. And we ended up doing a Western together after he came back from the army, called ‘Flaming Star .’”
Much more important, and even crucial to the entire plot of the film (as well as Huffaker’s book), however, turned out to be not the character played by Eden Roslyn Pierce, but the character of Nedda Burton – the mother of Presley’s Pacer, played perfectly by Dolores del Rio (or rather Maria de los Dolores Asunsolo y Lopez Negrete, because that was her real name and surname). An excellent Mexican film, television and theatre actress, whose spectacular career began in the mid-1920s.
Hailed as the “Mexican Diva,” Del Rio made her big-screen debut in the 1925 silent romantic comedy “Joanna.” Just one year later, she played one of the leads in the war drama “What Price Glory,” directed by Raoul Walsh, which turned out to be the highest-grossing film of 1926. With each passing year, the actress’s career gained more and more momentum, and her roles in productions such as “Ressurection” and “Ramona” won her the favor of both viewers and serious critics.
At the end of the 1920s, del Rio was among the ten highest-paid American actresses of the decade, and in the following years she successfully appeared in numerous productions in both America and Mexico, playing alongside the biggest Hollywood stars of the time, such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (they appeared together in the musical “Flying Down To Rio” (also known as “Karioka”).
She also won the prestigious “Ariel” awards three times, considered in the film community to be the Mexican equivalent of the Oscar. The first statuette was awarded to her for her role in the film “Las Abandonadas” from 1944 and again for her role in the film “El Nino y la niebla” from 1953. In turn, the war drama “Flor Silvestre” filmed in 1943, with her participation, was awarded the Palme d’Or at the first International Film Festival in Cannes.
Unfortunately, del Rio’s brilliant Hollywood career was overshadowed by an episode from the second half of the 1940s, when, according to sources, the actress was allegedly supposed to “provide assistance to anti-Francoist refugees after the Spanish Civil War “. Her behavior was supposedly poorly received by ”
Hollywood during the Cold War, gripped by anti-communist suspicion ” and caused her to disappear from American productions for almost twenty years. Until 1960, when she was offered a role opposite Elvis Presley in his next film.
Despite her many years of absence from Hollywood, the actress was very warmly welcomed by both her colleagues from the set and the entire film crew. It is even said that on the first day of shooting, Elvis approached her with a bouquet of roses, saying: “Dear lady, I know exactly who you are. It is an honor to work with one of the greatest and most respected legends of Hollywood .” Then he added: “And since you will be playing my mother in the film, please allow my ophthalmologist to make me lenses that would imitate the color of your eyes .”
Ironically, her performance in the western “Flaming Star” turned out to be one of her last. In the following years, considered “the quintessential female face in the world “, del Rio appeared in only five productions – “Cheyenne Autumn” from 1964, “Casa de Mujeres” from 1966, “Hijo De Todas” and “C’era una Volta” – both from 1967, and “The Children Of Sanchez” from 1978. The actress died in April 1983.
The other female roles included Anna Benton (who played Dorothy Howard), known from such films as “Men Into Space” and “Checkmate”, Mirian Goldina, Virginia Christine and the child star Barbara Beaird (who played the role of Dr. Phillips’ daughter), who only a year earlier had starred opposite Carolyn Jones in Michael Curtiz’s crime film “Man in the Net”.
- Barbara Steele became famous mainly for her appearances in Italian Gothic horror films.
Article written and provided by Mariusz Ogieglo, EP Promised Land http://www.elvispromisedland.pl/
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