The Chapman Report
Encyclopedia
The Chapman Report is a 1962 film made by DFZ Productions and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. It was directed by George Cukor
and produced by Darryl F. Zanuck
and Richard D. Zanuck
, from a screenplay
by Wyatt Cooper and Don Mankiewicz
, adapted by Gene Allen
and Grant Stuart
from Irving Wallace
's 1961 novel The Chapman Report. The original music was by Leonard Rosenman
, Frank Perkins
and Max Steiner
, the cinematography by Harold Lipstein, the colour coordination images and main title design by George Hoyningen-Huene
, and the costume design by Orry-Kelly
.
The film stars Shelley Winters
, Jane Fonda
, Claire Bloom
, Glynis Johns
, and Efrem Zimbalist Jr, with Ray Danton
, Andrew Duggan
, Ty Hardin
, Harold J. Stone
, Cloris Leachman
, and Henry Daniell
.
, the film was originally conceived for 20th Century Fox
to attract customers with discussions and depictions of sexual matters that would not be allowed on American television. Darryl F. Zanuck
was having problems with Fox during the production of two widescreen epic spectacular films for the studio in Europe, Cleopatra
and The Longest Day
at the same time. When Fox would not do the film, Zanuck offered the property, his son the producer, director Cukor and the female stars to his friend and rival Jack Warner
.
Warner Brothers replaced the film's planned male leads with their own Warner Brothers Television contract leads who received no extra money to do the film. Warner Brothers felt that casting these performers would attract their fans to the film, while at the same time pleasing the stars who had requested more interesting and different material than they had at Warners.
Andrew Duggan
played a character based on Dr. Alfred Kinsey
; Efrem Zimbalist Jr played one of his researchers, who meets and interviews the four women depicted in the film. The leading ladies consist of Jane Fonda
as a frigid young widow; Shelley Winters
as an adulterous
middle-aged housewife having an affair with artist Ray Danton
; Glynis Johns
as a trendy older woman infatuated with athletic young beach boy Ty Hardin
; and Claire Bloom
as a nymphomaniac.
Costume designer Orry-Kelly dressed each of the different female characters in only one color throughout the film.
As many as seven different writers worked on the film with Gene Allen, who was contracted to Cukor's organisation delivering the final screenplay. The film attracted much criticism during its production by the Legion of Decency amongst others. After a screening at San Francisco where Cukor claimed the audience liked the film, the studio recut the film. At the Legion of Decency's insistence, Jack Warner had Michael A. Hoey
reedit the film and wrote a different ending with Zimbalist and Duggan saying that American women were rather normal sexually, a message at odds with the rest of Cukor's film. A different director was brought in to reshoot it.
George Cukor
George Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and...
and produced by Darryl F. Zanuck
Darryl F. Zanuck
Darryl Francis Zanuck was an American producer, writer, actor, director and studio executive who played a major part in the Hollywood studio system as one of its longest survivors...
and Richard D. Zanuck
Richard D. Zanuck
Richard Darryl Zanuck is an American film producer. He iscredited for producing famous movies of the 1970's, 80's, 90's and the 21 century.-Life and career:...
, from a screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
by Wyatt Cooper and Don Mankiewicz
Don Mankiewicz
Don Mankiewicz is a screenwriter.Born in Berlin, Germany, he is the son of Herman J. Mankiewicz. He was nominated for the 1958 Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay for I Want to Live! Among his many television credits are Ironside, for which he wrote the pilot, the original Star Trek and...
, adapted by Gene Allen
Gene Allen
Eugene Allen is an American art director.He followed his father, and became a Los Angeles Police officer after he was laid off from his first job as a sketch artist. After serving in the United States Navy during World War II, Allen went to art school to pursue his career...
and Grant Stuart
Grant Stuart
Grant Stuart was a rugby league footballer of the '90s. He played for the Balmain Tigers in 1994 and the Newcastle Knights from 1998 to 1999.-External links:*http://www.rugbyleagueproject.org/players/Grant_Stuart/summary.html...
from Irving Wallace
Irving Wallace
Irving Wallace was an American best-selling author and screenwriter. Wallace was known for his heavily researched novels, many with a sexual theme. One critic described him "as the most successful of all the many exponents of junk fiction perhaps because he took it all so seriously, not so say...
's 1961 novel The Chapman Report. The original music was by Leonard Rosenman
Leonard Rosenman
Leonard Rosenman was an American film, television and concert composer.-Life and career:Leonard Rosenman was born in Brooklyn, New York. After service in the Pacific with the Army Air Forces in World War II, he earned a bachelor's degree in music from the University of California, Berkeley...
, Frank Perkins
Frank Perkins (composer)
Frank S. Perkins was an American song composer best known for the song Stars Fell on Alabama ....
and Max Steiner
Max Steiner
Max Steiner was an Austrian composer of music for theatre productions and films. He later became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Trained by the great classical music composers Brahms and Mahler, he was one of the first composers who primarily wrote music for motion pictures, and as...
, the cinematography by Harold Lipstein, the colour coordination images and main title design by George Hoyningen-Huene
George Hoyningen-Huene
Baron George Hoyningen-Huene was a seminal fashion photographer of the 1920s and 1930s. He was born in Russia to Baltic German and American parents and spent his working life in France, England and the United States.-Europe:...
, and the costume design by Orry-Kelly
Orry-Kelly
Orry-Kelly was the professional name of Orry George Kelly , a prolific Hollywood costume designer....
.
The film stars Shelley Winters
Shelley Winters
Shelley Winters was an American actress who appeared in dozens of films, as well as on stage and television; her career spanned over 50 years until her death in 2006...
, Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. She rose to fame in the 1960s with films such as Barbarella and Cat Ballou. She has won two Academy Awards and received several other movie awards and nominations during more than 50 years as an...
, Claire Bloom
Claire Bloom
Claire Bloom is an English film and stage actress.-Early life:Bloom was born in the North London suburb of Finchley, the daughter of Elizabeth and Edward Max Blume, who worked in sales...
, Glynis Johns
Glynis Johns
Glynis Johns is a South African-born Welsh stage and film actress, dancer, pianist and singer . With a career spanning seven decades, Johns is often cited as the "complete actress", who happens to be a trained pianist and singer...
, and Efrem Zimbalist Jr, with Ray Danton
Ray Danton
Ray Danton , also known as Raymond Danton, was a radio, film, stage, and television actor, director, and producer whose most famous role was The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond...
, Andrew Duggan
Andrew Duggan
-Career:During World War II, Duggan was in the 40th Special Services Company, led by actor Melvyn Douglas in the China Burma India Theater of World War II. His contact with Douglas later led to his performing with Lucille Ball in the play Dreamgirl. He developed a friendship with Broadway...
, Ty Hardin
Ty Hardin
Ty Hardin, born Orison Whipple Hungerford, Jr., is a former American actor best known as the star of the 1950s ABC western television series Bronco.-Early life:...
, Harold J. Stone
Harold J. Stone
Harold J. Stone was an American film and television character actor.Born Harold Hochstein to a Jewish acting family, he began his career on Broadway in 1939 and appeared in five plays in the next six years, including One Touch of Venus and Stalag 17, following which he made his motion picture...
, Cloris Leachman
Cloris Leachman
Cloris Leachman is an American actress of stage, film and television. She has won eight Primetime Emmy Awards—more than any other performer—and one Daytime Emmy Award...
, and Henry Daniell
Henry Daniell
Henry Daniell was an English actor, best known for his villainous movie roles, but who had a long and prestigious career on stage as well as in films....
.
Plot and production
Based on Irving Wallace's novel that was based on the Kinsey ReportsKinsey Reports
The Kinsey Reports are two books on human sexual behavior, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female , by Dr. Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy and others and published by Saunders...
, the film was originally conceived for 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
to attract customers with discussions and depictions of sexual matters that would not be allowed on American television. Darryl F. Zanuck
Darryl F. Zanuck
Darryl Francis Zanuck was an American producer, writer, actor, director and studio executive who played a major part in the Hollywood studio system as one of its longest survivors...
was having problems with Fox during the production of two widescreen epic spectacular films for the studio in Europe, Cleopatra
Cleopatra (1963 film)
Cleopatra is a 1963 British-American-Swiss epic drama film directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. The screenplay was adapted by Sidney Buchman, Ben Hecht, Ranald MacDougall, and Mankiewicz from a book by Carlo Maria Franzero. The film starred Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Roddy...
and The Longest Day
The Longest Day (film)
The Longest Day is a 1962 war film based on the 1959 history book The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan, about "D-Day", the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944, during World War II....
at the same time. When Fox would not do the film, Zanuck offered the property, his son the producer, director Cukor and the female stars to his friend and rival Jack Warner
Jack Warner
Jack Leonard "J. L." Warner , born Jacob Warner in London, Ontario, was a Canadian American film executive who was the president and driving force behind the Warner Bros. Studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California...
.
Warner Brothers replaced the film's planned male leads with their own Warner Brothers Television contract leads who received no extra money to do the film. Warner Brothers felt that casting these performers would attract their fans to the film, while at the same time pleasing the stars who had requested more interesting and different material than they had at Warners.
Andrew Duggan
Andrew Duggan
-Career:During World War II, Duggan was in the 40th Special Services Company, led by actor Melvyn Douglas in the China Burma India Theater of World War II. His contact with Douglas later led to his performing with Lucille Ball in the play Dreamgirl. He developed a friendship with Broadway...
played a character based on Dr. Alfred Kinsey
Alfred Kinsey
Alfred Charles Kinsey was an American biologist and professor of entomology and zoology, who in 1947 founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, now known as the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, as well as producing the Kinsey Reports and the Kinsey...
; Efrem Zimbalist Jr played one of his researchers, who meets and interviews the four women depicted in the film. The leading ladies consist of Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. She rose to fame in the 1960s with films such as Barbarella and Cat Ballou. She has won two Academy Awards and received several other movie awards and nominations during more than 50 years as an...
as a frigid young widow; Shelley Winters
Shelley Winters
Shelley Winters was an American actress who appeared in dozens of films, as well as on stage and television; her career spanned over 50 years until her death in 2006...
as an adulterous
Adultery
Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...
middle-aged housewife having an affair with artist Ray Danton
Ray Danton
Ray Danton , also known as Raymond Danton, was a radio, film, stage, and television actor, director, and producer whose most famous role was The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond...
; Glynis Johns
Glynis Johns
Glynis Johns is a South African-born Welsh stage and film actress, dancer, pianist and singer . With a career spanning seven decades, Johns is often cited as the "complete actress", who happens to be a trained pianist and singer...
as a trendy older woman infatuated with athletic young beach boy Ty Hardin
Ty Hardin
Ty Hardin, born Orison Whipple Hungerford, Jr., is a former American actor best known as the star of the 1950s ABC western television series Bronco.-Early life:...
; and Claire Bloom
Claire Bloom
Claire Bloom is an English film and stage actress.-Early life:Bloom was born in the North London suburb of Finchley, the daughter of Elizabeth and Edward Max Blume, who worked in sales...
as a nymphomaniac.
Costume designer Orry-Kelly dressed each of the different female characters in only one color throughout the film.
As many as seven different writers worked on the film with Gene Allen, who was contracted to Cukor's organisation delivering the final screenplay. The film attracted much criticism during its production by the Legion of Decency amongst others. After a screening at San Francisco where Cukor claimed the audience liked the film, the studio recut the film. At the Legion of Decency's insistence, Jack Warner had Michael A. Hoey
Michael A. Hoey
Michael A. Hoey is a British author and film and television writer, director, and producer. He is the son of Dennis Hoey, who played Inspector Lestrade in Universal's Sherlock Holmes series.- Film and television :...
reedit the film and wrote a different ending with Zimbalist and Duggan saying that American women were rather normal sexually, a message at odds with the rest of Cukor's film. A different director was brought in to reshoot it.