Wrap Shot: The Bad and the Beautiful
Behind the scenes of this dark look at Hollywood with director Vincent Minnelli and Robert Surtees, ASC.
In the Hollywood-set drama The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) —directed by Vincent Minnelli and shot by Robert Surtees, ASC — Kirk Douglas plays the corrupt and amoral head of a major film studio.
This looks like a photo of the film’s crew, but it’s actually the cast, playing the crew of a major motion picture starring “Georgia Lorrison” and “Victor 'Gaucho' Ribero” (played by Lana Turner and Gilbert Roland, there on the bed).
We believe that’s Minnelli on the crane, riding with the actual camera. Surtees won an Academy Award for his outstanding black-and-white cinematography, one of five Oscars earned by the production.
In 2002, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film culturally significant and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
