Double Indemnity is a 1944 thriller. It stars Barbara Stanwyck as a housewife who is accused of killing her husband for insurance money and a claims adjuster whose job is to investigate.
The term double indemnity referred to a clause in certain life insurance policies that doubled the payout in cases when the death was accidental.
In 1947, Ms. Stanwyck arrived at Leicester Square with co-stars for the premiere of The Other Love. Over 5000 people were waiting to greet them and the actors were soon mobbed, forcing seven policemen to carry actor Robert Taylor through a crowd into the foyer of the Empire Theatre. The officers then fought their way back to the car, lifted Ms. Stanwyck, and carried her along a narrowing lane kept open by staff of the theatre. After twenty minutes the crowd swept aside the cordon and swooped at Ms. Stanwyck who had been placed on a stairway at the back of the foyer. She swayed on the staircase as policemen helped her upstairs, whilst others kept back the hysterical fans who were following her.
Finally, Taylor and Stanwyck reached the top of the stairway where camera men waited. There, she sat in a chair with Taylor kneeling at her feet chafing her hands. She later said: “I am not hurt. I was so overwhelmed that I was terrified for a few minutes.” The experience frightened her so much that weeks later she took out a policy at Lloyd’s that insured her against the risk of injury: “due to overenthusiastic fans”.
One of Ms. Oberon’s co-stars in The Other Love was David Niven. In the 1970s, he was contacted by producer Robert Evans who asked for his help in twisting the arm of underwriters. Evans wanted Laurence Olivier to play the role of Dr. Szell in his film “Marathon Man”, but because Olivier was suffering from cancer at the time, he was uninsurable. Therefore, Paramount Pictures refused to use him.
Evans contacted Mr. Niven and another friend, actress Merle Oberon, to arrange a meeting with the House of Lords. They did so, and soon after, Evans urged the Lords to put pressure on Lloyd’s to insure Britain’s greatest actor. He succeeded, and a frail Lord Olivier began working on the film. In the end, not only was Olivier nominated for the Best Actor in a Supporting Role Academy Award, but his cancer also went into remission. He lived on for another thirteen years.
Lord Olivier had interactions with Lloyd’s a couple of years prior to this, in 1949, when he directed A Streetcar Named Desire at the Aldwych Theatre.
In one scene, a radio was thrown through a window. Olivier insisted on using glass for realism purposes but had concerns as to the safety of his star performer, Vivien Leigh. He therefore asked Lloyd’s how much he could expect to pay for a policy to cover her if she were cut by broken glass. The sum of £1 a throw was decided upon.
