LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Jean Seberg: Otto Preminger
built 272 days ago
After an extensive talent search, producer-director Otto Preminger selected a 17-year-old unknown from Iowa, Jean Seberg, to play Joan of Arc, a role traditionally portrayed by actresses twice to three times Seberg's age. Seberg is cast opposite such venerable pros as Richard Todd (as Dunois), Anton Walbrook (the Bishop of Beauvais), John Gielgud (Earl of Warwick) and Felix Aylmer (The Inquisitor). Cast as the vacillating Dauphin is Richard Widmark. Graham Greene's screenplay refashions the original Shaw text in the form of a flashback. Seberg eventually became an accomplished actress by virtue of her appearances in such nouvelle vague films as Breathless, but it was too late to salvage Saint Joan, which was figuratively burned at the stake by critics and filmgoers alike. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Source:
Seberg's next film was ... for Preminger — Bonjour Tristesse. This time Rappaport gives her a kind of posthumous revenge against the dictatorial director. During filming, Preminger tormented her by threatening to replace her with Audrey Hepburn. In a startlingly clever scene, Rappaport shows an exchange between Seberg and David Niven, then reprises it by superimposing Hepburn's head over Seberg's. Hurt says she was secure that no 29-year-old (Hepburn) could play a 17-year-old. This is one of several comic superimpositions in the film, the funniest perhaps being when Hurt speculates that Barbra Streisand must have been one of the 3000 women who tried out for Saint Joan.
Source:
Seberg was discovered by Otto Preminger, who directed her in her first two films. She made her film debut in 1957 in the title role of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan. She secured the role after being chosen from 18,000 actresses. The young Seberg was then thrust into the glaring spotlight and subject of countless Cinderella stories. Expectations were high. Reviews of the film were generally mediocre, praised Seberg's beauty, and found her in over her head playing Joan.
Source:
Seberg was an unknown teenage student from Iowa when she was chosen by director Otto Preminger to play the title role in the 1957 film of Saint Joan. Though it was not a hit, Seberg went on to find critical success in such films as A Bout de Souffle (aka Breathless), Lilith and Bonjour Tristesse. She ... appeared in the 1950s British comedy, The Mouse That Roared. She married Gary, and became increasingly involved in radical American politics, most notably as a supporter of the Black Panther party, which Hoover was then describing as the greatest threat to internal security in the US.
Source:
Film concentrates on key films in Seberg's career, beginning with her screen test for "Saint Joan" and the tough time she endured on the set with Fuhrer-like director Otto Preminger. Taking in the similarly ill-fated Preminger pic "Bonjour Tristesse," docu moves on to examine her recruitment by Jean-Luc Godard for "Breathless," which turned her into the cinephile's pinup girl.
Source:
The real story of Seberg's life starts in Marshalltown, Iowa, population 19,000, where her father was a pharmacist. After some acting in high school, she went off to do summer stock on the Cape, then fell into the hands of Otto Preminger.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Otto Preminger