Choices of the Heart (1983)
Being on the set of Choices of the Heart was like stepping into a time machine. We filmed both interiors and exteriors dressed for 1913, New York and everywhere you looked there was poverty, soot, and period detail. Women with weary faces and armfuls of children, extras trudging in tattered coats, and lighting so dim it felt like gas lamps.
One scene in particular has stayed with me, a failed attempt to save both mother and child during childbirth. It was brutal to watch, even as fiction. The set was drenched in red light and shadow, a visual echo of the women’s grim reality in those years, a world where giving life too often meant losing it.
At that time in history, birth control was illegal in the U.S., women were having babies practically every nine months, and families were struggling to feed them. Into that bleak reality walked Margaret Sanger, played by Dana Delany,a nurse who defied Anthony Comstock’s “morality laws” to bring education and contraception to those who needed it most.
In 1873, Congress passed a law outlawing the distribution, sale, mailing and possession of “obscene” materials, including contraception.
The Comstock Act, as it became known, was named after Anthony Comstock, an anti-vice crusader who later became a special agent to the U.S. Post Office, giving him the power to enforce the law.
Rod Steiger played Anthony Comstock, the real-life postal inspector who fought to suppress birth control information and gave his name to the Comstock Laws. Henry Czerny played Margaret Sanger’s husband.
We shot many night exteriors in Toronto’s Distillery District, whose cobblestone streets and nineteenth-century warehouses were perfect for 1913 New York. It was eerie: as soon as the extras filled the frame, the illusion became complete — mud, rags, hungry faces, prams and coal smoke.
Working with Rod Steiger was… complicated. Sometimes frightening. He was a towering presence, fiercely intelligent, and never shy about his opinions. For reasons I never fully understood, he had it in for the director and frequently tried to make me his messenger. “Tell Paul he couldn’t direct his way out of a paper bag,” he’d bark, makeup still being applied. Of course I never delivered the insults verbatim. Continuity may be my job, but diplomacy quickly became part of it.
One running battle was about picking up scenes after lunch. I’d have to approach Mr. Steiger with Director’s requests, and to remind him of continuity details — whether his cane was in his hand or his hat was off. Post-lunch was his least favorite time. He’d roll out miles of insults about the director and I’d quietly return with a heavily edited version. At one point, half-joking, I advised the director to think of Rod Steiger as a cranky child after feeding — full belly, bad mood, ready for a nap.
Another daily ritual: his comments on my clothes. “Don’t you have any real clothes at home? You come to set in your pajamas,” he quipped one morning. He was tough, no question, but I took it with a grain of salt. Over time, I realized we weren’t really experiencing Rod Steiger. We were experiencing Anthony Comstock. Rod stayed in character — grumpy, rigid, moralistic — even between takes.
That’s the magic and the madness of making a period film. You’re not only recreating history; sometimes you’re living inside it, too.
Words Have Power 