It was February, and the grave digger had been forced to use electric drills to open the frozen ground in Vienna’s Central Cemetery. It was as if even nature were doing its best to reject Lime, but we got him in at last and laid the earth back on him like bricks.”Wonderful stuff, and Carol Reed was going to do it. But Alex was a bit short – always had been – so he’d made this deal with David Selznick, the American who made Gone With the Wind, Rebecca and Duel in the Sun They were alike: gamblers, big spenders, and a bit short. They had a deal: Selznick would distribute The Winslow Boy and The Fallen Idol in America; Korda would do the same for Selznick’s pictures, The Paradine Case and Portrait of Jennie, in Britain And they’d make The Third Man together. That didn’t seem so bad because Selznick thought he could get Cary Grant to play Rollo Martins. Plus he had an actress under contract, Valli, perfect for Anna.

And what about Noel Coward as Lime? Grant and Coward? Makes the mouth water, doesn’t it? And you can see Lime – smart, thin-lipped, sarcastic, cruel and the way Greene had him in the script: “A light, amusing, ruthless character, he had alwaysbeen able to find superficial excuses for his own behaviour.”Well, it didn’t work out. They offered Grant a piece of the profits – it would have been a fortune – but Grant was on the cheap side and he wanted his money up front, so it fell through And Coward went with him. So someone said, what about Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten? Cotten was another Selznick contract player, so that was easy. As for Welles, Selznick was wary: he said that Orson tended to mess around with material, and he and Cotten were old chums Put them together and a film could get out of control. But Reed had a hunch about Welles – if anyone could find him.That was only the start of the fuss Selznick also wanted to “help” on the script. So he begged Greene and Reed to go out to California for conferences – meetings that began at 10.30 pm and which were spoiled by Selznick’s reliance on Benzedrine and his habit of forgetting which picture they were talking about But he thought the guys should be American, not English OK, they agreed In which case why name one of them Rollo? cried Selznick. So Greene and Reed agreed that it was a little too Sloane Square They’d think of something else “Holly” was what they thought of Is he a girl? yelped Selznick Are these two fruits?Then there was the title The Third Man, mused Selznick.

Not bad, but what about A Night in Vienna? Something with a hint of romance Selznick still wanted Coward, but Reed was firm. He said Lime was too far from Coward’s image – and Coward, after all, was gay. In the end, Selznick had too many other problems to contend with – approaching bankruptcy and whether or not to marry Jennifer Jones When Welles saw the script, he knew it was for him. But he took money up front, too, and a fraction of what had been offered to Grant.So the unit went to Vienna in the autumn of l948, and they filmed at night in the streets, in the sewers, at the cemetery and at the Prater for the Ferris wheel scene. Reed was never sharper, adding little touches here and there Like the cat.