experience to guide the people to a better way of living, breaking the cycle of vendetta and death. Cast Faith Domergue as Colomba della Rabia George Dolenz as Lt. Orso Antonio della Rabia Donald Buka as Padrino the Bandit Joseph Calleia as Mayor Guido Barracini Robert Warwick as The French Prefect Hugo Haas as Brando, a bandit Hillary Brooke as Lydia Nevil Nigel Bruce as Sir Thomas Nevil Production Sturges and Ophüls The saga of the making of Vendetta, which had the working titles of "Colomba" and "Our Lady of the Doves", is extensive. In 1944, after ten years, writer/director Preston Sturges left Paramount Pictures, where he made his most popular and successful films, including the runaway hit The Lady Eve (1941), and joined in a partnership with eccentric millionaire aviator Howard Hughes to create California Pictures. By September 1945, work has already begun on the new company's first picture, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, written and directed by Sturges, and it was announced that Sturges had completed the first draft of an adaptation of Prosper Mérimée's 1840 novella Colomba, the first time it had been used as the basis for a sound film. (It was adapted in 1920 in France as a silent film.) Sturges began the project at the request of Hughes, who was looking for a vehicle for his protégée, Faith Domergue. By July 1946, German director Max Ophüls had been announced as the director, in what would be his American debut. Ophüls had been trying for four years to get a directing job in Hollywood, and Sturges hired him so that he could concentrate on completing ...Harold Diddlebock. Ophüls' first choices to play opposite Domergue were James Mason and Madeleine Carroll, but Hughes refused to pay star salaries, and worried that Domergue, who had little acting experience, would be outshone by powerful and better-known actors. The cast that was eventually assembled under Ophüls had Domergue, Robert Ryan, J. Carrol Naish, Gregory Marshall, George Renevant, and Fortunio Bonanova. Principal photography began in mid-August 1946. After only a week of shooting, Hughes, who was recuperating from the crash of an experimental reconnaissance plane, complained to Sturges about the slowness of Ophüls' shooting pace and the way he handled Domergue. Saying that he did not want "foreigners" working for California Pictures, he forced Sturges to fire Ophüls; the German director later made the film Caught (1949) about his experience