Russell describes how she was desperate for direction (or maybe validation?) from Howard Hawks … But the thing is: she obviously just started out doing the part perfectly, and he felt no need to keep saying, “You’re perfect, you’re perfect …” But actors are insecure (especially if they have the awareness that they are 15th down on the list for the part) and Russell was worried that Hawks didn’t like what she was doing:
We’d been shooting two days when I began to wonder if his instructing me that my suit should be kind of hard-boiled-looking was the only advice I was going to get from Mr. Hawks.
He sprawled in a chair, way down on the end of his spine, and his eyes were like two blue cubes of ice, and he just looked at me.
After the second day I went to Cary Grant. “What is it with this guy? Am I doing what he wants?”
“Oh, sure, Ross,” Cary said. (All the English call me Ross.) “If he didn’t like it, he’d tell you.”
“I can’t work that way,” I said. I went over to where Hawks was sitting. “Mr. Hawks,” I said, “I have to know whether this is all right. Do you want it faster? Slower? What would you like?”
Unwinding himself like a snake, he rose from his chair. “You just keep pushin’ him around the way you’re doin’,” he said. I could hardly hear him but I could see those cubes of eyes beginning to twinkle.
Red, did you catch Bacall talking about Hawks on TCM last night?