The shooting of Houseboat began on August 8, 1957. Sophia's magic reasserted its power, and he decided once more that only she could unlock his sexual problems and make a complete man of him. He went to her dressing room to make peace. She shook hands with him, and would have been happy to leave the matter there. But to her horror, Cary proposed that she leave Ponti once and for all and marry him. She must have known that Gary's sexual insecurity would make her life a torment, and that his challenge to her to cure him was no basis for a proposal.
As she told more than one reporter, she felt much safer with an ugly man (she seemed unaware of her brutal insult of Ponti, her inference being that most women would want Cary Grant, but how many would want Carlo Ponti?)
In this ghastly circumstance. Houseboat continued. Cary refused to take no for an answer. Shavelson recalls that Sophia would come to him in tears, crying, "This man is married. Now he's starting again with me. He doesn't know that Italian girls are different and I am looking for a proper husband, not a glamour man." Shavelson did his best to soothe her.
Cary was by now completely out of control. He went to see Carlo Ponti and offered to do four movies for him for virtually nothing (an assurance of several million dollars in profits) if Ponti would give Sophia up. Disgusted, feeling that Cary was less than a man, Ponti refused.
After that, Shavelson says, "It was murder on the set. Cary made things very, very difficult for everybody, because he was in such a bad temper, having to kiss, to hold, to play love scenes with a woman who not only had turned him down but was living with her lover. ' Cary complained about the daily rushes. He hated the very camera work of veteran Harry Stradling. Charging Stradling with making him look as though he had a double chin, he forced the out of shape cameraman to climb up ladders to shoot him from above, so that a shadow would conceal the fleshiness under his jaw. For all his careful exercise and his dietary regimen, middle age was catching up with him.
Cary took over the direction, giving orders to both Miss Loren and the children in the cast. He screamed at Martha Hyer persistently. Determined to destroy Sophia Loren, he accused her of having an affair with the virile and handsome Harry Guardino, a member of the cast, and sent a detective to spy on the actor's house.
There was no basis for his suspicion; Miss Loren was incapable of being unfaithful to Ponti. But even when the detective reported that Guardino was having an affair with another woman, Cary wasn't satisfied. He called the man a liar, fired him and hired another detective, who issued an identical report. Guardino, who had been a fan of Cary Grant, learned that Cary was having him followed. Now he had to go on the set and play scenes with Cary, concealing his fury.
