The Daisy Miller Screenplay Arbitration That Left Bogdanovich Refusing a Writing Credit

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The Daisy Miller Screenplay Arbitration That Left Bogdanovich Refusing a Writing Credit

Peter Bogdanovich and Frederic Raphael / 1970s

Daisy Miller also generated an unusual authorship dispute involving screenwriter Frederic Raphael, whose adaptation credit became contentious during production. Bogdanovich later claimed that Raphael's original screenplay was so far removed from Henry James that he could not use it, saying that most of the finished film followed the novella and that only two ideas from Raphael's work remained: the miniature painter and a sequence set in the baths. The disagreement went to arbitration in England, partly because Raphael was English. The ruling allowed Bogdanovich to receive a billing credit but required the wording “Additional Dialogue by.” He rejected that compromise, refusing to give himself the credit. The episode illustrates how literary adaptations could produce battles not only over the finished film's tone but also over who had actually shaped the screenplay, particularly when a director substantially reworked a credited writer's material.