by Wilbur Smith
Hollywood had come calling early in my career. No sooner had print rights to When the Lion Feeds been sold to Charles Pick at Heinemann, than the screen rights had been optioned. Stanley Baker—best known today for his role in the blockbuster Zulu—was going to play Sean Courtney, with Peter O’Toole as Dufford “Duff” Charleywood, Sean’s best friend and partner in the goldfields. Meanwhile, historian and screenwriter John Prebble had been brought in to work on the script, and I was penciled in to act as a technical adviser. Filming was planned for the southern Transvaal and Natal—but no film ever materialized. The rights to all my other novels had been snapped up, too.
Two years earlier, in 1969, I had met producer Michael Klinger. Acclaimed today as the most successful independent producer in Britain in the 1970s, he was disparaged in some quarters—British critic Sheridan Morley called him “nothing so much as a flamboyant character actor doing impressions of Louis B. Mayer”—but he was no fool, he knew movies, and he loved my work. The son of Jewish Polish immigrants to London, Klinger had entered the movie industry through the two Soho strip clubs he owned. Effectively, he’d started as a producer of soft-core pornography, but he’d struck it rich by producing the cult classic Get Carter, one of the greatest British gangster movies of all time, starring Michael Caine and written and directed by the brilliant Mike Hodges. He purchased the rights to Shout at the Devil, buying Gold Mine before it was even published and securing the options for Eagle in the Sky, The Eye of the Tiger and even The Sunbird. Only the first two ever got filmed, ironically Gold Mine before Shout at the Devil.
It was not until I was handing in my third novel, The Sound of Thunder, to Heinemann, that I received my first original commission in the world of film, when a producer approached me to write the screenplay of Sir Percy Fitzpatrick’s much-loved Jock of the Bushveld. First published in 1907, it was the true story of the author’s travels with Jock, his Staffordshire Bull Terrier cross, in the 1880s as he worked his way across the Bushveld region of the Transvaal (then the South African Republic). It had been a childhood favorite of mine, the memoir recalling my grandfather’s stories of his time as a transport rider, and I leapt at the chance. I spent the next months working on the script with Sir Percy’s daughter, Cecily Niven, while Pretoria-based film impresario Emil Nofal set about auditioning dogs to play Jock. After much hard work, nothing ever came of the project. It was my first taste of the fickle nature of film.
In 1968 an adaptation of one of my novels hit the silver screen. In the summer of that year, The Dark of the Sun was released as The Mercenaries, only retaining its original title in its American release. The book was still banned in South Africa, but the film, directed by Jack Cardiff, made waves immediately for its graphic scenes of violence and torture. Rod Taylor, the gritty Australian actor, played Bruce Curry; the gorgeous Yvette Mimieux was brilliant as Madame Shermaine Cartier, renamed Claire for the film, while NFL legend Jim Brown, fresh from his role in The Dirty Dozen, was an incredibly believable Sergeant Major Ruffo. Though it was set in the Congo, the movie had been filmed in Jamaica, with interiors shot at Borehamwood Studios in London.
It wasn’t just the title that had been changed in the transition from page to screen. The psychopathic Cockney barrow boy Wally Hendry—who kills Ruffo before Curry kills him in the final moment—became a Nazi war criminal named Heinlein, loosely based on the real-life Congo mercenary Siegfried Muller, who was notorious for wearing his Iron Cross, won during the Second World War, on his uniform. In the German-dubbed version of the movie, Curry became a German himself. Rechristened Willy Kruger, he was transformed in the translation into a Wehrmacht officer who had clashed with Heinlein over his fanatical Nazism. The German version also cut the scene where Heinlein murders two Congolese children, on the grounds of decency, which was a surprise given that the character was supposed to be a Nazi.
The film was one of the most violent of its time, but no more violent than the book had been—and neither was any more violent than what had actually gone on in the Congo, probably Africa’s most violent conflict at the time and certainly one of the bloodiest. Even the director would later admit that the violence happening in the Congo was much worse than could ever have been depicted on film. In their research, they had encountered atrocities so appalling that it left them nauseated.
The Mercenaries might have been notorious for its graphic scenes, but it inspired a later generation of filmmakers. Martin Scorsese described the movie as one of his “guilty pleasures,” while Quentin Tarantino used several tracks from the score in his film Inglourious Basterds, and even cast Rod Taylor in a cameo role as Winston Churchill.
As The Mercenaries hit the cinemas, I was putting the finishing touches to my fourth novel, the stand-alone thriller Shout at the Devil. It was loosely based on the sinking of the German Imperial Navy’s SMS Konigsberg in the Rufiji River—an area of present day Tanzania where I had often gone to hunt and where, memorably, I hunted my first elephant. Shout at the Devil was made into a movie released in 1976. Its heroes, the drunkard American elephant hunter, Flynn Patrick O’Flynn, and the languid English remittance man, Sebastian Oldsmith, were played by Hollywood legends Lee Marvin and Roger Moore. What they were after—or at least what Flynn was after—was the ivory of the elephants in the Rufiji Delta. In the story, only one thing stands between Flynn and his prize: the psychotic German commissioner who rules the area with incredible brutality as if it was his own personal fiefdom. Their vendetta must take a back seat as the crippled German warship, Blücher, is moored in the same delta awaiting repair, and Flynn and Sebastian are forced by the British authorities to mount a daring raid to destroy the ship before it gives Germany an unbeatable advantage in the war for East Africa.
Before that, though, came my fifth novel, Gold Mine, and the movie that it spawned—Gold, released in 1974. Gold Mine had conquered the bestseller lists, selling over 100,000 copies in hardback, and Michael Klinger was hard at work raising the capital to produce the movie. MGM bought the rights for more than £30,000 and I was enlisted to write the film script for a further £10,000, plus I was in for a share of the film profits—which all sounded great to me. By the time the novel was published, Klinger had raised much of the £1,000,000 capital he needed from backers in South Africa—but, not for the first time, apartheid raised its ugly head. Roger Moore had agreed to star as Rod Slater—but, before shooting could begin, the head of the Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians’ Union (ACTT), Alan Sapper, announced that his union would not allow us to film in South Africa, his principled stand against the evils of apartheid. Roger was a member of that union and, if he went ahead, the union would blacklist all his future films.
Actors union Equity supported Roger, incensed that any other union would threaten the livelihood of one of its members. A standoff ensued, dominating the British newspaper headlines. Michael Klinger looked for a solution, and asked Sapper to suggest an alternative location. “How about Wales?” said Sapper. Michael pointed out that Welsh coalmines were very different from African goldmines, and besides, the landscapes of wet and windy Wales were entirely inappropriate. It looked likely that the film’s financiers would very quickly dump the project.
There was much discussion and further bad press before Sapper finally relented, instructing his union’s members to make the decision themselves on whether to shoot in South Africa. At last, production could begin. A wonderful crew came together, each one of them determined to defy the racist rulings and work in harmony with South Africans, whether black or white. The movie employed many local South Africans, and there was never an apartheid problem on set. Gold Mine was a story without an overt political message, set in an industry that—as my personal research showed—was not divided along racial lines. However, there was a stark reminder of South Africa’s political system that disturbed the cast: at ten o’clock every night, a siren wailed, indicating the beginning of the curfew. No black worker was allowed outside after this time—a situati
on many in the cast and crew found intolerable, and a reminder that South Africa’s deeply entrenched racism touched every corner of life.
Gold Mine the novel had evaded the South African censors, but Gold the movie did not have so easy a passage. In the film, Roger was to share a romantic scene with Susannah York, who played the character Terry Steyner, in the bathtub. The scene had been part of the original book, with the heroine and hero chatting and having some fun and games in the bath, but it had initially been written out of the film script. The director, Peter Hunt, read the book again and liked the scene so much he worked it back in. What had passed the censors in print incited their anger on screen. They insisted it was removed from the South African version of the movie.
Roger was brilliant as Rod Slater and, like me, he took his research seriously, going deep underground in the mines of Buffelsfontein and Randfontein where the movie was filmed. He was a committed leading man, barely wincing when he contracted arsenic poisoning from the water in the mines—an affliction that turned his nipples green, prompting a rapid visit to a doctor. Roger even worked for free for the final three weeks of the shoot, when poor mine conditions meant shooting would have to relocate to a sound-stage in London.
When Gold was finally released, the critics were divided. The Johannesburg Star thought it was a triumph, predicting the great things it would do for the city on the global stage. The Los Angeles Times said the film “is everything people have in mind when they talk about a movie. Its hero is heroic, its heroine is beautiful and kittenishly sexy, its villains are outrageously villainous, its characters crustily colorful. It has scope, scale, surprise. It has more punch than a 15-round fight and more corn than Kansas. It is a travelogue of South Africa and a fascinating audiovisual essay on gold mining.”
Others were not so enthused. New York Times critic Vincent Canby suggested the opening scene had been shot through a brandy glass because director Peter Hunt was “embarrassed by the content of the film and was trying to hide it,” while the Wall Street Journal was marginally less damning: according to their critic Joy Gold Boyun, the film had failed because “it lingers too long on sentiment, sex and South African scenery and so loses the swift pace so crucial to this type of film.” When it came to be released in the USA, expectations had sunk so low the movie had to become part of a double feature.
I visited the set and enjoyed spending time with Roger Moore and Susannah York. I thought Susannah York was as cute as they came. When she died tragically from bone-marrow cancer in 2011, the London Telegraph remembered her as “the blue-eyed English rose with the China white skin and cupid lips who epitomised the sensuality of the swinging sixties.” We had all got to know one another on set and one night we were out on the town together at a nightclub in Johannesburg and I asked Susannah to dance. We danced for a while, getting progressively closer and closer, and I thought this was going to be my lucky night . . . And then Roger appeared at her shoulder at about half past midnight and said: “Okay, Sue, my girl. Bed time I think, we’ve got to film tomorrow. Come on.” And he took her by the arm and led her away. It was one of the great disappointments of my life. It was as close as I ever came to hating Roger Moore—if it was possible to hate such a sweet guy.
•••
The relative failure of Gold didn’t deter Michael Klinger, and it didn’t put off Roger Moore either. He was to be back, two years later, when the movie version of Shout at the Devil hit the silver screen.
In the meantime, there was the launch of the only original film script I ever wrote that eventually made it to the screen. The Last Lion would later find a second life when I cannibalized its story for my 1989 novel A Time to Die. The movie starred Jack Hawkins, Karen Spies and David van der Walt, and was directed by Elmo Witt, with the story focusing on a terminally ill American millionaire who goes to Africa on a final expedition to fulfill his life’s goal of hunting down a lion.
When the time came for shooting Shout at the Devil, Peter Hunt was back in the director’s chair, and this time, Roger was joined by Hollywood legend Lee Marvin. As a former marine, part of an elite group who were dropped behind Japanese lines in World War Two, Lee was the perfect choice to portray hell raiser Flynn Patrick O’Flynn.
Although I had set the novel in East Africa, the movie would be shot along South Africa’s Transkeian coast. Once again, before production had started, the British film industry was up in arms over what they saw as us condoning South Africa’s apartheid politics by working in the country. The ACTT union had ruled against Klinger and his company for filming Gold, effectively prohibiting their members from working in South Africa. If they wouldn’t budge, he would have to go to Rome to hire technicians.
Eventually production got underway, with the whole crew decamping to Port St. Johns at the mouth of the Umzimvubu River in the Transkei. The crew were bunked in little houses overlooking the sea but the idyllic surroundings did little to mitigate the hostile political situation. The local mayor made it known that, if the production threw a party and invited any “blacks,” then we would be thrown out of town.
I spent a lot of time on the set of Shout at the Devil. Roger had brought along his glamorous Italian wife, Luisa. She was typically Italian: fiery, passionate, and noisy. She terrified me. But it was Lee Marvin with whom I would become fast friends. He was as impressive off screen as he was on, dominating the set with his portrayal of Flynn O’Flynn. His magnetism in front of the cameras was matched by his feral zeal in real life. He was an unpredictable, riotous character, a handful for everybody, his life as colorful as any of the characters he played on screen.
Legend had it that, when Lee had one drink too many, his eyes turned red. Roger almost fell prey to the consequences of Lee’s red-eyed volatility during the centerpiece of the movie: a gloriously brutal and bloody fist fight between Roger’s Sebastian and Lee’s O’Flynn. The fight was intricately plotted, the routine blocked and rehearsed so that every move was nailed down, but as action was called for the first take, Roger saw Lee’s eyes turning red. Whatever he’d been drinking in his dressing room, it had pushed him over the edge—now he was drunk, and clearly thought he was in a real fight. It became one of the most stupendous fight scenes committed to celluloid, Lee’s fists whistling past Roger’s nose as he tries desperately to get out of the way, as authentic a portrayal of one enraged man trying to floor the other as you’ll ever see.
Lee’s love of vodka during filming led to all sorts of unexpectedly entertaining incidents. On one occasion, Lee was carrying the baby playing Roger’s daughter, and almost dropped her. In fact, the baby wasn’t a girl—we couldn’t find one in Port St. Johns, so we had to make do with a little boy instead. In the scene, O’Flynn was supposed to gently pick up the baby for the first time, cooing over it, but Lee forgot to support his head and he nearly ended up in the mud. And then the boy, who had been squalling like a force-ten gale, suddenly went limp and silent as if he’d fallen asleep. At first, everybody was amazed that Lee had this magical, calming effect on the child, but the reason was simple: Lee had breathed vodka fumes all over the boy, stupefying him instantly.
At other times, spurred on by the alcohol flooding his system, Lee’s courage bordered on the dangerous. In a scene shot in Kruger National Park, where we went to film O’Flynn as an ivory poacher, an elephant had been shot by a tranquilizer dart so that, on waking, we could film Lee and Roger pretending to shoot at him. As the elephant woke, disoriented and filled with rage as they sometimes are, Roger and the rest of the cast—including Ian Holm, who was playing O’Flynn’s mute servant and gun-bearer, Mohammed—turned tail and ran straight for the car before they could be trampled by this indignant and very large elephant. Wild with drink, Lee stood his ground. Oblivious to the fact that his gun was loaded with blanks for the movie, he thought of himself as the Great White Hunter, and wanted to face the elephant down single-handed. The elephant eventually walked away as they do when they see a rifle.
On another occasion, again
having enjoyed a drink, Lee deprived a hard-working stuntman of his daily fee by performing a risky stunt himself. According to locals, the Umzimvubu River was infested with sharks and the script called for Lee’s character to swim across the river to the wreck of the Blücher on the opposite riverbank. The plan was for Larry Taylor, an accomplished stuntman, to double for Lee, and the only shots we would need of Lee in the water were of him jumping in and starting to swim. Larry would then take over and continue the rest of the scene. Yet, no sooner was Lee in the water than his old marine training kicked in. Ignoring the cries of the director and crew, he surged unstoppably onward, powering his way through the river until he had made it to the wreck on the farthest side. Incensed, Larry Taylor put his shirt back on and stormed off. He was perhaps the only man in history who lost out on a day’s wages to the drink-fueled bravado of the legend that was Lee Marvin.
With shooting complete, the cast and crew went their separate ways. There was one last hurrah for Lee when, changing planes at Rome’s Fiumincino airport on the way home, he was beset by fanatical Japanese tourists who wanted his autograph and, again with drink pumping through his veins, he somehow lapsed into a post-traumatic-stress episode, brought on by memories of his wartime service in Japan, and ran like hell out of the air terminal, screaming like a banshee.
About eight years later, when the movie had been and gone, I was able to catch up with Lee in Australia. I had come fishing for giant marlin along the Great Barrier Reef, and chance had it that Lee was there too. It was an unforgettable experience. We would spot the enormous sickle-shaped fins of the marlin from half a mile away. Then we would move in. The bait we used was a five-pound bonito. I would watch in awe as the marlin saw the bait, then attacked it with a savage swing of its great bill. As soon as the fish felt the hook, it would go berserk, the rod arching over and the huge reel screeching. Braced on the boat, I would take the full force of the fish’s rage on my legs, while the marlin erupted from the surface of the sea like a missile launched from a submarine, dancing and tail-walking across the swells.