Trivia for
The Night of the Hunter (1955) More at IMDbPro »

• The sequence purportedly showing the preacher riding a horse in the distance was filmed in false perspective and was actually a midget astride a pony.
  
  
• In his biography, Robert Mitchum stated that director Charles Laughton found the script by James Agee totally unacceptable; he paid off Agee, sent him packing and rewrote virtually the entire script himself, uncredited.
  
  
• Charles Laughton had no great love for children and so despised directing them in this film that Robert Mitchum found himself directing the children in several scenes.
  
  
• So disappointed was he by the poor reception of this film on its initial release both critically and commercially, Charles Laughton vowed never to direct a film again, and he never did. The film he was planning to direct next was going to be a screen adaptation of "The Naked and the Dead."
  
  
• Later on in life, Robert Mitchum, who was usually indifferent to such matters, said that Charles Laughton was his favorite director and indicated that this was his favorite of the movies in which he had acted.
  
  
• Robert Mitchum was very eager for the part of the preacher. When he auditioned, a moment that particularly impressed Charles Laughton was when Laughton described the character as "a diabolical shit." Mitchum promptly answered, "Present!"
  
  
• Charles Laughton originally offered the role of Harry Powell to Gary Cooper, who turned it down as being possibly detrimental to his career.
  
  
• Jane Darwell had been suggested for the role of Rachel. However, Charles Laughton held out for Lillian Gish, as he had been a lifelong admirer of her work.
  
  
• Reports that James Agee wrote an incoherent screenplay have been proved false by the 2004 discovery of his first draft. That document, although 293 pages in length and manifestly overwritten (as is common with first drafts), is scene for scene the film Charles Laughton directed. Likewise false are the reports that Agee was fired. Laughton, however much he gnashed his teeth at having such a behemoth of a text in his hands with only five weeks to go before the start of principal photography, calmly renewed Agee's contract and directed him to cut it in half. He did. In Laughton's stage work (GALILEO, CAIN MUTINY COURT MARTIAL, etc), the great actor demonstrated he was a script editor of genius - he could induce the most stubborn and prideful writer to cut, cut, cut. And so he did in Agee's case. Later, apparently at Robert Mitchum's request, Agee visited the set to settle a dispute between the star and Laughton. Letters & documents located in the archive of Agee's agent Paul Kohner bear this out - they were brought to light by Laughton biographer Simon Callow, whose excellent BFI book about NIGHT OF THE HUNTER diligently sets this part of the record straight. The Agee first draft may eventually be published, but it has been read by scholars - most notably Prof. Jeffrey Couchman of Columbia University, who published his findings in an essay, "Credit Where Credit Is Due." To assert Agee's moral right to his screen credit in no way disputes Laughton's greatness as a director - clearly, he was as expert with writers as he was with actors - but Agee has been belittled and even slandered over the years, when his contribution to NIGHT OF THE HUNTER was of primary and enduring importance. (Submitted by F.X. FEENEY, film critic and author, who has read the original Agee script.)
  
  
• In the Spanish version the translators changed the name of the girl from Pearl to May, perhaps for the difficult pronunciation in Spanish.
  
  
• Robert Mitchum once stated that Charles Laughton was the best director he had ever worked for, ironic in that Laughton never directed another movie after The Night of the Hunter (1955) with Mitchum.
  
  
• Charles Laughton was able to convince Lillian Gish to come out of semi-retirement for the film.
  
  

• SPOILER: The Swedish title spoils the film, as it tells where the money is hidden.
  
  
• SPOILER: Robert Mitchum was openly contemptuous of Shelley Winters throughout the shooting of the film and later claimed to have wished Charles Laughton had actually used Winters in the scene when her character's body is seen dead underwater.
  
  

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