"with a look as cold as a Canadian nun"

[Subdeacon Joe]

Ray Milland actually checked himself into Bellevue Hospital with the help of resident doctors, in order to experience the horror of a drunk ward, in preparation for his role in "The Lost Weekend" (1945). Milland was given an iron bed and locked inside the "booze tank." That night, a new arrival came into the ward screaming, an entrance which ignited the whole ward into hysteria. With the ward falling into bedlam, a robed and barefooted Milland escaped while the door was ajar and slipped out onto 34th Street where he tried to hail a cab. When a suspicious cop spotted him, Milland tried to explain, but the cop didn't believe him, especially after he noticed the Bellevue insignia on his robe. The actor was dragged back to Bellevue where it took him a half-hour to explain his situation to the authorities before he was finally released.
When the film was given its first public showing at a sneak preview in Santa Barbara, CA, the audience reaction to the intense film was not good--they laughed. Director Billy Wilder recalled, "The people laughed from the beginning. They laughed when Birnam's brother found the bottle outside the window, they laughed when he emptied the whiskey into the sink." The theater lost viewers like a broken sieve. Preview cards were handed out, and the opinions of the flick ranged from "disgusting" to "boring." Wilder even claimed that one patron left the theater proclaiming, "I've sworn off. Never again." "You'll never drink again?" he was asked. "No, I'll never see another picture again." Another preview card said that the movie was great, but that all the "stuff about drinking and alcoholism" should be omitted.
Milland only got the lead role in the film because Paramount vetoed writer-director Wilder's first choice for the role, Broadway actor José Ferrer. Hedging its bets, Paramount demanded the casting of a star to headline the risky production, but Cary Grant and most of the other leading male stars of the day turned Wilder down. Milland got the role by default and was nominated for an Oscar. 
On the day of the ceremony, Milland said afterwards, "I knew I couldn't face it and made up my mind not to attend. At breakfast, I hesitantly told Mal [his wife] of my decision. She slowly put down her fork and just examined me. I didn't know where to look. Then she said, 'I know that you're erratic, volatile, and the possessor of a foul temper. But I never thought you were a coward!' Then with a look as cold as a Canadian nun, she said, 'You'll go the that ceremony tonight if we have to put you in a straitjacket.'" Milland would win the Oscar that night. 
It was only in later years that Wilder discovered that the title of Charles R. Jackson's novel is actually a typo. It was supposed to have been called "The Last Weekend."(IMDb)
Happy Birthday, Ray Milland!

 

[Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062]

from the title I thought you had met my ex-wife .........  🤐