MGM was excited about Travers, hoping he would become an international star he did not.ĭue to time pressures, Sonya and Ivan Moffat were forced to write the script out of continuity.

Cukor was disappointed too, because Mills would have been a wonderful Patrick, but the part had been offered to another Britisher, Bill Travers. The vet British John Mills was disappointed when Cukor informed him that the role of Patrick had already been cast. Even a line like, “I jabbed him hard with my elbow, he moaned and bent forward,” was considered too suggestive (of a blow to the groin). Hence, the censors asked for rewrites of Victoria’s description of her attempted rape to stress the rapist’s insanity and homicidal intent rather than its sexual contents. They also reminded that the love scenes could not be played with the couple in a prone position. The censors complained there was too much emphasis on Victoria in girdle, bra, and panties, and not enough on her conflicted persona.

In January 1955, a rough draft of the screenplay for “Bhowani Junction” was submitted for the approval of the PCA. Cukor’s portrait emphasizes the genuinely moving and tragic elements of his heroine’s life she’s a woman deemed immoral, or at least promiscuous by society. The exteriors of the picture were shot in Pakistan’s Lahore, and the interiors at London’s Elstree studio.Īva Gardner, then MGM’s most popular star, plays Victoria, an Anglo-Indian woman who has affairs with three men: Patrick, a young Anglo-Indian (Bill Travers) Ranjit, an Indian prince (Francis Matthews) who wants to marry her and Savage, a British Colonel (Stuart Granger). Set against India’s shifting political contexts, George Cukor’s tragic political melodrama, Bhowani Junction is one of his few grand on-location productions.

Bhowani junction by john masters