STACK #181 Nov 2019

EXTRAS FEATURE

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River Kwai ) when his flight to London was delayed in Paris. Gripped by the storyline he made enquiries about the film rights, only to discover that screenwriter/producer Carl Foreman had already bought an option on the book. Foreman was blacklisted in Hollywood in the 1950s because of his suspected Communist sympathy and membership in the Communist Party. Now exiled in England, Foreman had already tried to interest British film mogul Sir Alexander Korda in a joint film production of Boulle's novel. But Korda turned him down, stating that the story was far too anti-British. Moreover, he considered that the British colonel who orders his PoWs to construct a bridge for the Japanese Death Railway was either insane or a traitor. Korda's rejection allowed Spiegel to buy the film rights from Foreman, who he then immediately hired to write the first-draft screenplay. On Spiegel's advice, Foreman wrote in a part for an American commando ordered to blow up the bridge, primarily so that Spiegel could interest Columbia Pictures in the project. However, he omitted to inform the studio on who was actually writing the script because they would never have accepted a screenwriter who was on the Hollywood blacklist. Disillusioned by using a novice director for The Strange One , Spiegel sought the best for his new project and veteran director Howard Hawks was his first choice. Hawks was initially interested, but after reading the script he just didn't see it as a big grossing film and suggested that Spiegel use a British cast, an all British crew and a limited budget. After considering John Ford, William Wyler and Nicholas Ray, Spiegel finally settled on English director David Lean, whose wartime films showed his admirable grasp of the British military mind. However, Lean did not like Foreman's script, considering it be too melodramatic. Spiegel hired another

The Bridgeon theRiverKwai

1957

Directed by David Lean

F ollowing the enormous success of his multi- award-winning film On the Waterfront (1954), long and hard for his next production. He eventually chose The Strange One , with a screenplay by Calder Willingham based on his novel and Broadway play End as a Man . It was set in a Southern military academy whose code of honour fostered the corruption and brutalisation of the young cadets rather than independent producer Sam Spiegel searched

protecting them. Spiegel's intention had been to produce a movie that aligned with the then popular Teen-Pic genre. The resulting movie, however, became a mere horror story about the evil tricks of malevolent cadet Jocko De Paris (played by Ben Gazzara) wreaking havoc on the school and his classmates. Although most of the young cast and its director came from the New York Actors Studio, there was

certainly no Marlon Brando or Elia Kazan amongst them. Consequently, their total lack of film experience was all too plain to see. The Strange One earned no laurels, least of all from Spiegel, who expunged it from his memory by never referring to it again. Spiegel happened upon Pierre Boulle's best-selling novel Le Pont de la Riviere Kwai (English translation: The Bridge Over the

DID YOU KNOW: Pierre Boulle based his novel on his own experiences as a PoW of the Japanese during WWII. The Japanese forced Allied PoWs to build the Burma railway which resulted in some 30,000 PoW deaths.

Col. Nicholson (Alec Guinness) leads the PoWs into the Japanese prison camp

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