Quo Vadis, M-G-M?

The doctors could not be sure just what had caused Gregory Peck's eye infection, but M-G-M found its effects painfully clear: the moviemaking machinery had grown so complicated that an actor's inflamed eye was enough to inflict a year's postponement (and thus tie up $1,000,000 already spent) on "the biggest picture of all time."

For months M-G-M had throbbed with preparations for a super-epic Quo Vadis, based on the famed Sienkiewiecz novel about Roman persecution of the early Christians. Filming was to start July 1 in Rome on a $4, 000,000-to-$5,000,000 budget, a whopper for an economy-minded industry. Already shipped from Hollywood were 125 of 150 scheduled tons of equipment, including giant generators to feed the Technicolor arc lamps. Planes had flown eight tons of armor, enough to gird a Roman army of 2,500. On Manhattan's Times Square, a huge sign ballyhooing the picture was up in "fade-proof" paint.

High-priced live properties were involved, too. Producer Arthur Hornblow Jr. and Director John Huston labored over production logistics, the script, casting, and selection of thousands of costumes and props. The picture was on the schedules of Elizabeth Taylor, Walter Huston and Peck himself, who was to finish a film for 20th Century-Fox on June 15 and fly straight to Rome.

Three days before many of the Quo Vadis staff were to leave for Italy, Peck's eye puffed up. MGM, which needed every bit of the bright Italian summer for outdoor scenes in Rome, feared that he would miss the July 1 deadline. Last week the studio bowed to the fateful intricacy of its own schedule, and put the Roman invasion off to May 1, 1950. When Peck bounced out of the hospital, having lost only two days of shooting on the Fox lot (at the cost of a mere $40,000), M-G-M was already a prisoner of its decision.

Some M-G-M officials secretly thought it was just as well. Quo Vadis still had no final shooting script, some casting and production details were unsettled; with luck, most of the $1,000,000 investment could be salvaged in the end. Besides, M-G-M still had an even jumpier headache: Judy Garland had flounced off the Annie Get Your Gun lot, and the company had decided to scrap much of some $1,000,000 worth of film and wait until late summer to start the picture all over again with Betty Hutton.

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