Two Loves

Two Loves (1961)

So busy with her children... She didn't have time to get married!

American-born Anna Vorontosov teaches school in a remote, primitive section of northern New Zealand. Her experimental teaching methods have won her the love and affection of her pupils and their parents and the admiration of the unhappily married school inspector, Abercrombie. Her personal life, however, is less secure; frightened of love and sexually inhibited, she has always been aloof with men. Eager to break down this barrier is Englishman Paul Lathrope, a somewhat irrational and immature fellow teacher who aspires to be a singer. Though Anna is attracted to him, she refuses to submit to his advances.

Date of release
1961-05-24
TMDB
5.4 / 10 (11)
Runtime
1h 36m
Genres
Drama
Director
Charles Walters

Casting

Interesting facts

Two Loves is a 1961 American drama film directed by Charles Walters and starring Shirley MacLaine, Laurence Harvey, Jack Hawkins, and Nobu McCarthy. It was adapted from the book Spinster by Sylvia Ashton-Warner. It was entered into the 11th Berlin International Film Festival.

Production

By March 1959, MGM had purchased the rights to Sylvia Ashton-Warner's novel Spinster. Four months later, Ben Maddow was hired to write the screenplay. Ashton-Warner read the script and therefore declined to have anything to do with the film. She later commented: "Judging by the script I read, I believe [the film] would have deserved every harsh word it got. I particularly liked the critic who said it was a minor film but a major disgrace."

Sol C. Siegel, MGM's head of production, assigned Charles Walters to direct the film. By August 1960, Shirley MacLaine, Laurence Harvey, and Jack Hawkins were announced as the principal cast members, with plans to shoot on location in New Zealand by October. However, the location shoot was cancelled due to the inclement weather conditions and forecast rainy season within the Wellington Region.

Principal photography began in October 1960. During filming, Walters was forced to rearrange Harvey's shooting schedule as he was needed for Summer and Smoke (1961) by November 19. Therefore, he filmed Harvey's scenes first. Furthermore, Harvey and MacLaine did not get along on set. In her 1995 memoir, MacLaine stated she felt Harvey was "insensitive and pompous".

In November 1960, Walters told The New York Times: "This is absolutely murderous. We have got to do all our key scenes in one bunch. Every day and every moment is a climactic scene. I have never done anything like this before. I never want to do anything like this again.

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

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