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Unfinished business: Michael Wilson's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" screenplay
- Film History: An International Journal
- Indiana University Press
- Volume 24, Number 1, 2012
- pp. 56-73
- 10.2979/filmhistory.24.1.56
- Article
- Additional Information
Michael Wilson, a blacklisted expatriate American screenwriter, had received no credit for his work on the screenplay of David Lean and Sam Spiegel's worldwide success, The Bridge on the River Kwai. This paper describes Wilson's subsequent work for Spiegel and Lean on an adaptation of T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Differences with Lean over story direction on what would become Lawrence of Arabia eventually led to Wilson's departure and replacement by Robert Bolt. Although his contributions to the script were officially hidden, Wilson successfully appealed to the British Writers' Guild in a screen credit arbitration. But not until three decades later after the film's release was his credit formally acknowledged in the United States.