Trivia / Young at Heart (1955)

• Hostility on the Set: An odd case in which the hostility didn't happen between two actors, but rather one actor and another actor's spouse who was also present on the set. While making this film, Frank Sinatra took an almost immediate dislike to Doris Day's husband, Martin Melcher, who was also her manager, thinking that Melcher was "using" her to get ahead in the movie business, and tried to convince Day of that fact. When Day refused to listen to Sinatra's advice, he threatened to walk off from the film unless Melcher was banned from the Warner Bros. lot during production, which was eventually conceded, with Jack L. Warner himself issuing an order to all studio security guards to have Melcher banned from the set. In the end, Sinatra was proven right when, after Melcher's death in 1968, it was discovered that he had squandered all the money Day had earned during her 20-year film career.
• Wag the Director: Frank Sinatra had considerable pull in the production of the film, due to coming off from winning an Academy Award for From Here to Eternity:
  • As mentioned above, he got Doris Day's husband/manager Martin Melcher banned from the set.
  • The film started with Charles Lang as director of photography. Sinatra did not like to rehearse and was accustomed to doing scenes in one take, and he complained that the meticulous Lang was taking far too long to set up camera shots and wanted to do repeated takes. Sinatra walked off the film and threatened to quit unless Lang was fired. Lang was replaced by Ted D. McCord.
  • Sinatra's character Barney was originally written to die at the end of the film when Barney drives into oncoming traffic during a snow storm (as happened with the character's analogue in Four Daughters). Sinatra, whose characters in his two previous films (From Here to Eternity and Suddenly) died at the end, thought Barney should live, eventually having the ending re-written to accommodate his wishes.

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