Executive producer
Walter Mirisch complained that
John Huston acted unprofessionally in the post-production period after the shooting of this movie. The initial preview of Huston's cut of the movie in New York City was disastrous, and Huston refused to cut the movie after attending another preview, informing Mirisch, via his agent, that "he liked it just the way it is." Huston's agent informed Mirisch that his client "didn't see any reason to be present at previews." United Artists, which financed the movie, was upset over the previews, and demanded a re-edit. Huston refused to re-cut it, and the re-editing process was overseen by Mirisch. This movie was a failure at the box-office. In his 2008 memoir, "I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History", Walter Mirisch writes that, "John Huston, in his autobiography, said that he was aghast when he saw what I had done in the re-editing of his picture. Responding to preview criticism, I had tried to make it less draggy and more accessible to American audiences. I saw John Huston again on a couple of occasions, many years after the release of 'Sinful Davey', and he was very cold, as I was to him. I thought his behavior in abandoning the picture was unprofessional." The two, who had worked together on
Herman Melville's
Moby Dick (1956), never collaborated again.
