December 22, 1965 –
David Lean’s Russian epic, Dr Zhivago, starring Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Geraldine Chaplin, Tom Courtenay, Rod Steiger, Alec Guinness, Ralph Richardson, Siobhán McKenna, and Rita Tushingham, opened in the US, on this date.
This movie was shot in Spain during the regime of General Francisco Franco. One day, while filming the scene with the crowd chanting the Marxist theme (at 3:00 a.m.), police showed up on set thinking a real revolution was taking place, and insisted on staying until the scene was finished. Apparently, people who lived nearby had awoken to the sound of revolutionary singing, and mistakenly believed that Franco had been overthrown. The secret police surveyed the crowd as the extras sang the Internationale for a protest scene, so many extras pretended they didn’t know the words.
The Haus of Dcaligari 