horrible directors to work with anyone?

Yes, Otto Preminger definitely. So many stories about his bad behaviour.

Richard Widmark remarked in an interview that Henry Hathaway was tough to work with and an outright sadist (yet these two worked together on several occasions).

Fritz Lang was tough to work with, for some, not all. Henry Fonda couldn't stand him. Warners workhorse Michael Curtiz was known to be difficult and, in the eyes of some, downright insane. Errol Flynn refused to work with Curtiz after several successful films they worked on together. Charles McGraw,--yes, that Charles McGraw, was driven to tears on the set of a movie they were working on.

Erich Von Stroheim was regarded as not so much horrible in a personal sense, just a stickler for detail, who took an incredible length of time to get just one scene right.

Yet another director with a tough to work with reputation, though not so famous as the others, Mia's father, John Farrow. A competent craftsman and sometimes more, he never seemed to get quite the right project to put him over as a top rank director.

I read the Harry Carey, Jr. autobiography . He loved John Ford despite everything that sadistic man did to him and to almost every actor who worked with him. I rather regret reading about Ford as I love his films BUT he was really an awful human being on set and off. Carey is not the only source of the tales of bad behavior.

He had a "stable " of actors who would and could work with them but there were many who were "one time only" because they would not put up with his arbitrary cruelty.

His films are so totally un-like their director's nature and behavior that one has to wonder just what was going on.  It was not just the alcohol.

Which worked out well.

Hondo is one of my favorite Wayne Westerns.

Glenn would have  "worked" in Hondo and it would have been good, but "different".

HARRY Carey, Junior. Not Timothy Carey.

politicidal

It was more than "tyranny" with Ford though. The stories of what he did to people have been told often and by many who knew him.
It was way more than mere "bullying" and "being the boss" and yet somehow he managed those wonderful, often light-hearted, films.

The Quiet Man is one of my favorite films ever  but having read what he put Maureen O'Hara through, I found it difficult to enjoy it this year in the way I used to.

I find it difficult to imagine Glenn Ford as Hondo. John Wayne's iconic stature puts the movie in a certain light. I wonder about Ford in the same role. Wayne's alpha qualities are what I remember, while Ford was by comparison more of a modern type, and a bit of a worrier, but maybe.

I've read accounts of Hitchcock having disdain for actors to the point of putting them through a psychological and occasionally physical endurance test on his films.

Kubrick : The Shining : Shelley Duvall especially.


Multiple multiple takes because they were "not quite right". 


According to Shelley Duvall the infamous 'Here's Johnny!' scene took 3 days to film and the use of 60 doors.

There were so many changes to the script during shooting that Jack Nicholson claimed he stopped reading it. He would read only the new pages that were given to him each day.

Stanley Kubrick, known for his compulsiveness and numerous retakes, got the difficult shot of blood pouring from the elevators in only three takes. This would be remarkable if it weren't for the fact that the shot took nine days to set up; every time the doors opened and the blood poured out, Kubrick would say, "It doesn't look like blood." In the end, the shot took approximately a year to get right.

Despite Stanley Kubrick's fierce demands on everyone, Jack Nicholson admitted to having a good working relationship with him. It was with Shelley Duvall that he was a completely different director. He allegedly picked on her more than anyone else, as seen in the documentaries Making 'The Shining' (1980) and Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (2001). He would really lose his temper with her, even going so far as to say that she was wasting the time of everyone on the set. She later reflected that he was probably pushing her to her limits to get the best out of her, and that she wouldn't trade the experience for anything - but it was not something she ever wished to repeat.

On the DVD commentary track for Making 'The Shining' (1980), Vivian Kubrick reveals that Shelley Duvall received "no sympathy at all" from anyone on the set. This was apparently Stanley Kubrick's tactic in making her feel utterly hopeless. This is most evident in the documentary when he tells Vivian, "Don't sympathize with Shelley." Kubrick then goes on to tell Duvall, "It doesn't help you.".

other shining trivia