Frank Langella on 'Wrath of God's Troubled Shoot

Actor Frank Langella has just published his memoirs in the new book "Dropped Names: Famous Men and Women as I Knew Them," out later this month. An extended excerpt details the difficult 1972 shoot of The Wrath of God, starring ROBERT MITCHUM and Rita Hayworth. The '40s screen goddess (who was later diagnosed with Alzheimer's) had difficulties remembering her lines. Langella recalls how Mitchum helped get Rita to the set on time.  

She was by then finished in pictures and the word was that Mitch had insisted on her, possibly for old times’ sake, the rumor being they had once had a tumble or two. Mitch would play a runaway priest. I would be the town’s despot, who swears revenge on all priests for murdering my father, and Rita would be my mother, a God-fearing matron who never lets go of a set of rosary beads...

One day [Mitchum] comes to me and says: “Listen, pal, we’re never going to finish this f--king picture if we don’t get your girl to work on time.” Mitch, Rita, and I have our own local drivers, and each of them regards the harrowing ride along narrow, unfenced mountain roads as challenges to be met with daredevil speed. Mitch sleeps through his rides and so do I. But Rita, who is terrified of all moving things, makes her driver go at a snail’s pace and often arrives at work an easy hour or more after everyone else. So Mitch comes up with a plan: “Look,” he says. “Let’s the three of us ride together. You sit up front and we’ll put Rita in the back with me.”

Early mornings become a struggle of manipulating Rita into a broken-down jalopy and laying her down on the floor of the back seat. Mitch tosses a blanket over her as she pulls her floppy sailor hat down past her eyes. I then hop in the front and off we go. These rides become a hilarious routine of Rita laughing and screaming at the top of her lungs, with Mitch stretched out on the back seat outshouting her, singing Gilbert and Sullivan patter songs, exactly as written, in perfect pitch, while a non-English-speaking driver careens close to the narrow road’s edge as wildly as he dares. When we reach the location, I get out and Mitch and I lift Rita from the floor, remove the blanket, pull up her hat, and calm her down. “Cheated the old Grim Reaper again,” he says and saunters off to his trailer.

At the time, very few people understood or recognized Alzheimer's and assumed she was simply an alcoholic. Hayworth died in 1987 at the age of 68.

via The Daily Beast (Newsweek)