What's the Matter with Helen? Screenplay

My initial reaction to "What's the Matter with Helen?" is that with its unevenness, there must have been a lot of footage that hit the cutting room floor. My instinct was wrong, it's just uneven. Only one scene was shot that was removed altogether: Adelle realizes her cardboard cutout has gone missing while she's being annoyed by precocious, self-involved youngster Rosalie, who stopped by to give her teacher an autographed photo of herself. However, there are tons of little dialogue trims throughout the entire film. There's a little more backstory on Mr. Hill and the boys, it's mentioned that Linc's ex-wife was involved in an unnamed headline scandal, revealed that Helen couldn't play the piano when they left Iowa, etc.

Interestingly, Shelley Winters rarely uttered any of her dialogue verbatim, Dennis Weaver ad-libbed huge portions of his scenes and two of the funniest bits in the film were invented by Debbie Reynolds ("You know what they say about rabbits, don't you?," "Poverty frightens me, I guess"). The lesbian kiss, mentioned elsewhere on the site, was shot -- but it was an unscripted moment thought up by Winters just prior to filming.