Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

The legendary Oliver Messel served as Production Designer on Suddenly, Last Summer, and was tasked with, among other challenges, bringing vividly to life Cousin Sebastian’s primeval garden. “I couldn’t find anyone to make the garden so I used this wonderful person, Hugh Skillen, who made all the head-dresses for the Margot Fonteyn productions, and he made the insect-eating plants and all sorts of exotic outsized plants,” Messel recalled. “I myself made banana leaves with waxed crinkle-paper and then mixed them all in with real plants. I made all the vines from paper twisted round in coils and then covered with pale green flock.”

Messel was also an acclaimed costume designer, and Elizabeth was to have worn his designs in Cleopatra. His costumes, however, were scrapped when the production moved from England to Rome and Elizabeth’s wardrobe was completely redesigned by Irene Sharaff. (He also designed the eponymous Oliver Messel Suite at London’s Dorchester Hotel, Elizabeth’s sumptuous home away from home in the city of her birth.)

Elizabeth’s monologue, which occurs after her character, Catherine Holly, is administered a truth serum to help her recall the tragic and shocking events that led to her cousin’s tragic demise, ran twelve pages and was filmed over two days.

“It tore Elizabeth’s gut out,” recalled Mankiewicz. “I must have done five takes without getting what I wanted. So I said, ‘Let’s break.’ A few minutes later, my assistant director said, ‘Joe, look at this.’ There was Elizabeth behind some scenery, lying full length on the floor. I thought at first she’d fallen and hurt herself. Then I heard her sobbing. I wanted to spare her more distress. As it was nearly five o’clock—when the English film unions pull the plug for the day—I said, ‘Okay, everyone—fresh start in the morning.’ Suddenly Elizabeth was there. ‘Fresh start, my ass,’ she says. Over to the camera and we go for take six. When the rushes were run for Tennessee, he said, ‘Jesus, what a moment!’’

Emotionally and physically spent, Elizabeth reportedly took to her bed for two days after its completion. She would go on to call Suddenly, Last Summer “the greatest, the most emotionally draining, the most emotionally stimulating professional experience of my life.”

Elizabeth had met Katharine Hepburn, the already mythic star of Bringing Up Baby and The Philadelphia Story, as a girl in the legendary MGM commissary. “One day, when I was about fourteen, Katharine Hepburn was sitting at a table right behind me in the commissary. I went over to her and said, ‘Excuse me, ma’am, would you mind signing my [autograph] book?’” “I was in such awe of her—she was one of the really golden ones”. Both Elizabeth and Hepburn garnered Academy Award nominations in the Best Actress category for their work in the film, “but,” as their director later said, “it was a foregone conclusion they would knock each other out.”