The Little Hut

The Little Hut (1957)

A neglected wife is shipwrecked on a desert island with her husband and her would-be lover.

Sir Philip Ashlow (Stewart Granger), his neglected wife, Lady Ashlow (Ava Gardner) and his best friend Henry Brittingham-Brett (David Niven) are shipwrecked on a desert island. This potential ménage à trois where the two men compete for the lady's attention is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of a fourth inhabitant of the island.

Date of release
1957-05-03
TMDB
6.4 / 10 (16)
Runtime
1h 30m
Genres
Comedy, Romance
Director
Mark Robson

Casting

Interesting facts

The Little Hut is a 1957 romantic comedy film directed by Mark Robson from a screenplay by F. Hugh Herbert, based on the 1950 play by Nancy Mitford, itself adapted from the 1947 play La petite hutte by André Roussin. The film stars Ava Gardner, Stewart Granger, and David Niven.

Production

There was reluctance to obtain the screen rights due to concern about censorship. In February 1955, F. Hugh Herbert and Mark Robson announced they had formed a company to purchase the film rights to the play and make a movie from it.

Herbert had written The Moon Is Blue, which had famously been released without a seal of approval from the Production Code. However Herbert said "after that episode I was determined not to make another picture without a seal."

The screenplay made a number of changes from the play. In the play, the affair was real, but in the film. the wife only pretended to get her husband interested in her. Robson said Herbert had proved with The Moon Is Blue that the censors did not mind if characters "talked about sex as much as you want – as long as nothing happens." The boyfriend became an old admirer of the woman, and the woman and her husband were given a divorce on board the sh…

Herbert completed the script by January 1956 and David Niven, Noël Coward, and Clifton Webb were being discussed for the male leads. Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer were also discussed. By April, the lead roles had been cast: Niven, Ava Gardner and Stewart Granger. They made the film independently but did a deal with MGM to finance which involved MGM loaning their contract players Stewart Granger and Ava Gardner.

Herbert said it "doesn't matter much where we make the film since 75% of it takes place on a desert island."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended