friction on the set

i just finsihed watching an extra on the bringing up baby dvd titled "cary grant- a class apart" and it said that after "the pride and the passion" cary wanted sofia to costar with him in houseboat cuz he really liked her. but by the time they started shooting houseboat, sofia had already gotten married and this upset cary. so there probably was friction on the set. years later when sofia was writing her autobiography, cary asked her not to mention him, but she ended up doing so. this is when the friendship ended apparently.

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Pipchick says > I heard that they had strong feelings for each other. There seemed to be alot of chemistry between them in the movie. I believe he asked her to marry him but I can't recall why she turned him down. She and Paul Peterson had some friction I had heard.

I've read and heard a lot about this whole issue and have come up with my own theory about what happened. Apparently Sophia was dating both men, Cary Grant and Carlo Ponti, who she later married. Both of the men were married, both separated from their wives and each of them proposed to her.

While still dating Grant and without telling him, she married Ponti by proxy (meaning they weren't even in the same location at the time; she was making this movie in LA and he had just gotten a quickie divorce in Mexico). Naturally, Grant found out but what a rotten thing to do on her part. As it turns out, Ponti's Mexican divorce wasn't even legal so they had to get an annulment years later. Grant didn't stay upset because he continued to pursue her during this shoot and again while making his next movie.

Okay, here's my theory. I think she had strong feelings for Grant. Otherwise, she would have done whatever she could to get out of making the movie with him. I think she married Ponti because, given his job, producer, he was in a position to either help or ruin her burgeoning career. I have no way of knowing any of this and I doubt she'd admit it because she did have two kids with Ponti and stayed with him until his death. I'm not saying she didn't love the man either; maybe she did but I think she was just determined to succeed. Also, Ponti was an Italian like her and he had basically discovered her. Grant had been married a few times before his wife at the time and had no kids. It may have been on her mind to have children so she may have wondered if he hadn't had any before if he would be able to or want to at that point in his life. Ponti already had two children.

They were both good actors but it's really hard to fake that kind of chemistry both on screen and in the movie posters. Once she married Ponti, if it's true it was for all the reasons I mentioned, she would obviously have to be careful to avoid any whispers and suspicion she was still carrying on with Grant. Even if they were, they'd have to make it seem like that wasn't the case. Neither of them was exactly averse to being involved with someone who had a spouse.


Woman, man! That's the way it should be Tarzan. [Tarzan and his mate]

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Robert Osborne on TCM said that just before the shooting of the closing scene of the wedding Cary learned that Sophia had married Carlo Ponti as soon as his divorce came through, causing a lot of tension in that last scene.

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Yes, adorable little Charlie Herbert loved making the picture (he didn't always, claiming Doris Day was as cold as ice then he worked with her, never even speaking to the children in the cast!) and said Cary and Sophia were wonderful.

So if there was any tension, it must not have been all that bad.

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Non-sequiturs are delicious.

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