page_title: The Stranger (1946 film)
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: The Stranger (1946 film) / Production
caption_attribution_description: English: Orson Welles (left) &amp; Billy House in The Stranger - cropped screenshot
context_page_description: The Stranger is a 1946 American film noir starring Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young, and Orson Welles. It is Welles's third completed feature film as director and his first film noir, about a war crimes investigator tracking a high-ranking Nazi fugitive to a Connecticut town. It is the first Hollywood film to present documentary footage of the Holocaust. The original story by Victor Trivas was nominated for an Academy Award. The film entered the public domain when its copyright was not renewed.
context_section_description: Produced by Sam Spiegel (who then billed himself as S. P. Eagle), The Stranger was the last International Pictures Production distributed by RKO Pictures. Filming took place from late September to November 21, 1945, at Samuel Goldwyn Studios and Universal Studios. The film's musical score is by Bronisław Kaper.
  Spiegel initially planned to hire John Huston to direct The Stranger. When Huston entered the military, Welles was given the chance to direct the film and prove himself able to make a film on schedule and under budget—something he was so eager to do that he accepted a disadvantageous contract. In September 1945 Welles and his wife Rita Hayworth signed a guarantee that Welles would owe International Pictures any of his earnings, from any source, above $50,000 a year if he did not meet his contractual obligations. He also agreed to defer to the studio in any creative dispute. The Stranger was Welles's first job as a film director in four years.
  Editor Ernest J. Nims was given the power to cut any material he considered extraneous from the script before shooting began. "He was the great supercutter," Welles said, "who believed that nothing should be in a movie that did not advance the story. And since most of the good stuff in my movies doesn't advance the story at all, you can imagine what a nemesis he was to me."
  For directing and acting in The Stranger, Welles was to receive $2,000 a week plus $50,000 when the film was completed, and a chance to sign a four-picture deal with International Pictures, making films of his own choosing.
  Welles was given some degree of creative control. He worked on the general rewrite of the script, wrote all of the scenes in the drugstore, and wrote scenes at the beginning of the picture that were shot but subsequently cut by Spiegel and executive producer William Goetz. Welles had endeavored to personalize the film and develop a nightmarish tone. There is uncertainty about how much of this material was actually shot and how much was removed. Some scenes elaborated on Meinike's flight through Latin America, shadowed by an agent named Marvales and his wife, a woman in distinctive gold earrings who is murdered by savage dogs kept by the Nazis-in-exile. A brief vestige of the sequence remains in the final release version. In a 1982 interview, Nims said 32 pages of the script were eliminated at his suggestion, including the first 16 pages.
  An early scene showing a meeting of Mary and Rankin was filmed but removed. She finds him in the woods, looking at the incongruous 16th century Gothic clock in the town square, and tells him it was "brought by sailing ship from the shores of the Mediterranean" by one of her ancestors. Rankin is familiar with the clock and her family's history, and as they walk through the cemetery he notes the many Longstreets who are buried there and their patriotic service.
  "Character development suffers from the loss of these scenes," wrote film historian Bret Wood, who also observes that inclusion of the Latin American pursuit would have increased the sense of foreboding before the story enters the idyllic town of Harper. A sense of mystery would also have been set up by an imaginative but unrealized pre-title sequence in the Welles version; instead, the titles are simply superimposed over the image of the clock.
  Welles wanted Agnes Moorehead to portray the investigator. "I thought it would be much more interesting to have a spinster lady on the heels of this Nazi," Welles said. Edward G. Robinson was cast instead.
  Welles planned to use the campus of his alma mater, the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois, as the setting for The Stranger. The idea was ruled out by budget restrictions, but a few artifacts are seen in the film. A sign in the gymnasium reads "Harper vs. Todd" and refers to Clover Hall, a building on the Todd campus, and "Mrs. Collins"—Annetta Collins, teacher, housemother, and director of kitchen services. It was Collins who had recruited Welles for Todd in 1926, after meeting the boy at his father's hotel in Grand Detour. A note on a blackboar
caption: Welles and Billy House in The Stranger
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