Shooting
Granger, who performed most of his stunts himself, took fencing lessons with Jean Heremans when preparing for the role. The 8-minute-long duel in the theater between Granger and Ferrer took eight weeks of preparation, including memorizing eighty-seven fencing passes. Filming this scene left Granger with a wrenched knee, a damaged shoulder, and an injured back. Other accidents on set included Jean Simmons – who was visiting her husband Granger – almost receiving a sword in her face, and a chandelier hitting a mattress upon which Granger was supposed to lie and embedding itself in the stage. He insisted on seeing the chandelier dropped once before shooting the scene.
Nina Foch, who appeared as Marie Antoinette, wore the same costume as Norma Shearer in MGM's 1938 film.
Parker later said that Granger was the only person in her career that she did not get along with:It wasn't a conflict between the two of us. Everyone disliked this man ... Stewart Granger was a dreadful person, rude ... just awful. Just being in his presence was bad. I thought at one point the crew was going kill him. Jean visited him on the set and would leave his dressing room in tears. He humiliated her. It was terrible. All of the dueling scenes in Scaramouche were wonderful, though. I'll give Granger credit for that. He didn't know how to do any of that, but worked hard and learned. Mel Ferrer, his counterpart in the movie, was extremely adept at the swordplay, but was a gentleman. He could have taken advantage and upstaged Granger, the star, but he never did.Parker's perception of the fencing in Scaramouche appears to be mistaken. According to Ferrer:I'd been playing a lot of goody-goodys, making pictures for Metro; and they asked me to do this one. They asked me if I fenced, and I told them, "No." They said, "We thought you were a fencer." And I said, "No, I'm a dancer." They said, "So, what do we do about that?" I said, "It's very simple. I'll learn to fence the way a dancer would learn a routine. If I were learning a ballet, I'd learn it by number. One, two, three, four ... four, you're on this spot; five, six, seven, you do that; that's the way you learn choreography." And I learned how to fence in six weeks.
We did seven duels in the picture, and each one was different; we never repeated a sequence. And that's like learning seven ballets; it's very, very difficult ...
Jimmy [Stewart Granger] knew how to fence already. He'd been in the theater in England, and that's part of the training for actors on the London stage; they learn to fence. They learn how to ride, most all of them learn how to ride horseback. They're so much more developed as performers than we are; they get so much better training.
