Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow months before Conran made the movie with his actors, he shot it entirely with stand-ins in Los Angeles and then created the whole movie in animatics so that the actors had an idea of what the film would look like and where to move on the soundstage. To prepare for the film, Conran had his cast watch old movies, such as Lauren Bacall in "To Have and Have Not" (1944) for Paltrow's performance and "The Thin Man" (1934) for the relationship between Nick and Nora that was to be echoed in the one between Joe and Polly. Avnet constantly pushed
Lauren Bacall but, in her autobiography, she wrote that Sinatra ended the relationship abruptly after becoming upset that the story of his marriage proposal to Bacall had reached the press. When Bacall was out with her friend Irving Paul Lazar, they encountered the gossip columnist Louella Parsons, to whom Lazar revealed the details of the proposal. Bacall met Jason Robards. Their marriage was originally scheduled to take place in Vienna, Austria, on June 16, 1961; however, the plans were shelved after Austrian authorities refused to grant the pair a marriage license. They were refused a marriage also in Las Vegas, Nevada. On