To shoot the movie, Sirk brought in his favorite cinematographer, Russell Metty. The two had worked together six times prior to this: Take Me to Town (1953), Taza, Son of Cochise (1954), Magnificent Obsession (1954), Sign of the Pagan (1954), There's Always Tomorrow (1956), and All That Heaven Allows (1955), on which they perfected the light and color effects that would bring to the melodrama form the rich visual texture associated with Sirk's greatest films.

On Written on the Wind, Metty achieved a depth of field that was difficult for Technicolor stock at the time. Sirk liked the use of deep focus lenses because he felt they gave harshness to the objects and "a kind of enamelled, hard surface to the colors."

All the cast members had compliments for Hudson on this project. He made a particular impression on Stack, who definitely had the flashier part, full of hysteria, fear, madness, alcoholism, murderous rage, while, as Hudson himself noted about his own role, "as usual, I am so pure I am impossible." Hudson, of course, was the star, and one of the top actors at the studio, while Stack was a lesser name on loan to Universal for the picture. "Almost any other actor I know in the business...would have gone up to the head of the studio and said, 'Hey, look, man, I'm the star - you cut this guy down or something,'" Stack said. "But he never did. I never forgot that."

Malone later noted how Hudson helped her with her performance. "I loved Sirk as a director," she said, "but there was one day he just couldn't get through to me." Quietly and patiently, Hudson took Malone aside and, because he had so much experience with Sirk already, was able to make her understand what the director was trying to tell her.

During production, Hudson was married to Phyllis Gates, his manager's former secretary. It was a short-lived marriage that many people, after Hudson's homosexuality became known, insisted must have been a pre-arranged sham. But those who observed the two together, when Phyllis visited the set or when she and Hudson joined Stack and his wife for casual weekends, said they never thought there was anything between them to indicate that their relationship was entirely a lie.

Despite Hudson's pleasant camaraderie with everyone on the set and his apparent happiness in his marriage, Malone said she found him to be somewhat of a loner who hid his feelings of sadness and insecurity. Nevertheless, she developed a bond with him that helped her through moments of tension on the set. "Rock gave me that sense of security whenever I worked with him."

Stack said he did no research to prepare for his difficult role. "I just went and used my imagination, and I was doing DTs and madness and the six stages of drunkenness, and it was a good chance to truly prove that I could either do something pretty good or completely fall on my face." Stack got so involved in his part that Bacall, enacting the scene where he had to knock her over the bed and induce a miscarriage, became a little worried. As Stack later related it, Bacall told him, "You're crazy, your eyes are crazy." Stack told her the character was supposed to be crazy and she replied, "I don't mean acting crazy, you really are crazy!"

At the same time she was shooting this picture, Lauren Bacall was struggling to learn her lines for an upcoming TV production of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, co-starring Coward and Claudette Colbert. Bacall was pressured by Coward's insistence that all his cast have their lines letter-perfect by the time work began on the production.

by Rob Nixon