Deciding to prove that having a maid is a waste of money (his), Edgar bets his brother-in-law that he can clean the house unaided in three hours. He floods the kitchen while washing the dishes, slips on the linoleum while mopping, and breaks the vacuum cleaner and the furniture in every room.
The celebrated final line of the film was an afterthought. The original scene had Esther arriving at the Chinese Theater and collapsing in the forecourt sobbing, "Oh, Norman! Norman!" The scene was reshot two ways: with the familiar "Mrs. Norman Maine" tagline and the oddly irrelevant "Hello, everybody, this is Vicki Lester." David O. Selznick originally rejected the story, as films about Hollywood had generally failed, but was persuaded to do the film by his wife Ir ...[Read Story ]