The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973)

Interesting facts

• Based on: The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing
• Filmed in: Arizona and Utah

The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing is a 1973 American Western film adaptation of Marilyn Durham's novel of the same name directed by Richard C. Sarafian, written by Eleanor Perry and William W. Norton, and starring Burt Reynolds and Sarah Miles.

Production

Film rights were sold, before the novel had been published, for $50,000. Eleanor Perry had read the novel in galleys and loved it. She took the novel to producer Martin Poll, who bought it and they agreed to produce together with Perry writing the script.

Perry had recently split from her husband Frank, personally and professionally. In early 1972, she said the film would contain "very little of the murderous violence we've seen in Westerns lately." Perry described the film as "the first woman's-lib Western."

Perry admitted the novel was "female fantasizing. But what else was Wuthering Heights?"

Poll produced the film at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where Dan Melnick was head of production. The movie was MGM's biggest-budgeted film of the year. Melnick tried to get Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw to play the leads, but was unsuccessful. Perry said the film "cried out for Hepburn and Bogart, but we settled on Burt Reynolds."

Burt Reynolds was signed in November 1972. Reynolds said he did the movie "because I loved the book. I'd never done a love story, either."

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