Roseanna McCoy

Roseanna McCoy (1949)

The story of the great 'Hatfield - McCoy' feud

In the late 1800s, the longtime feud between the Kentucky McCoy family and the West Virginia Hatfields has lain dormant – until Johnse Hatfield meets charming young Rosemary McCoy and falls in love. When the young couple declare their intention to marry, Johnse's father, Anse Hatfield, protests, but he's also pleased that the feud can be renewed. Violence between the clans breaks out with tragic results, but Johnse and Rosemary stand fast.

Date of release
1949-10-12
TMDB
6.1 / 10 (7)
Runtime
1h 40m
Genres
Drama
Director
Irving Reis

Casting

Interesting facts

Roseanna McCoy is a 1949 American drama film directed by Irving Reis. The screenplay by John Collier, based on the 1947 novel of the same title by Alberta Hannum, is a romanticized and semi-fictionalized account of the Hatfield–McCoy feud. The film stars Farley Granger and Joan Evans.

Production

Samuel Goldwyn originally had commissioned screenwriter John Collier to develop the project for Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell, but when O'Donnell married William Wyler's older brother, the producer - still resenting the fact Wyler had left Samuel Goldwyn Productions to form his own production company - felt betrayed and replaced her with newcomer Joan Evans.

Granger was pleased with the initial draft of the script, which had enhanced the story with undercurrents of witchcraft and superstition, and he was anxious for filming to begin. When he arrived at the studio on the first day of filming and discovered director Irving Reis was helming the project, his interest immediately waned.

Highly regarded script doctor Philip Yordan had been hired to work on the screenplay, and pages of dialogue began to arrive on the set. The cast found themselves filming partial scenes or having to deal with different pages of dialogue for the same scene.

After two months of chaotic filming, the production shut down. The cast and crew was reassembled several weeks later and discovered Reis had been replaced by Nicholas Ray without explanation. On the first night of shooting, it began to rain, and it continued to rain for the next two weeks, making exterior filming impossible. Everyone returned to Hollywood, and a week later they were called back when the weather finally cleared.

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

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