I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History

21. 633 Squadron, a New Corporate Entity, and Unrealized Projects

21 633 Squadron, a New Corporate Entity, and Unrealized Projects O ne of the first properties The Mirisch Company had acquired was 633 Squadron, a novel by Frederick E. Smith. It is a fictional World War II story about the British Royal Air Force Mosquito bombers, which were built of plywood and were the only wooden airplanes flown in combat. The project remained relatively inactive until I proposed it to James Clavell. He wrote a good script, and we began to prepare it for production . Jim then went on to London, where he wrote and directed To Sir, with Love. Later his novel King Rat came out and launched Jim on what became his ultimate career, as a novelist. He subsequently wrote TaiPan and many other adventure novels. It was always our intention to produce 633 Squadron as an Eady Plan picture. However, I wanted to stock it with as much American talent as I could. I was fortunately able to secure the services of Cliff Robertson to play the lead. There was a character role in it that fit George Chakiris—with whom we still had options dating back to West Side Story, for which George had won an Academy Award—and we considered having him in the film would be valuable. 201 To direct it, I chose an old college friend, Walter Grauman, who was enjoying a successful career in television. He was eager for an opportunity to direct a feature film, and as he had piloted a B-25 bomber during the war, I thought this would provide an appropriate opportunity. I asked Lewis Rachmil, a capable producer, to go to London to oversee the production. I was quite overloaded with work at the time, and I felt I couldn’t go abroad and be separated from the rest of our program . I also enlisted Bob Relyea, my right arm—who had been with us since working as a first assistant director on The Magnificent Seven, and who had also worked on West Side Story, The Children’s Hour, and The Great Escape—to go to London. Cecil Ford, who received credit as producer on the picture, was principally a production manager of English films and had grown up in the British film industry. He had been the assistant director on The Bridge on the River Kwai and had done many outstanding films. Cecil had also worked as production manager on my Errol Flynn picture, The Warriors. Cecil Ford became the producer of record, because that was required under the terms of the Eady Plan. We were permitted to exclude the salaries of only three non-British people from the computation of the labor cost of the picture, which determined its qualification for Eady benefits. We chose an ex-RAF airfield at Bovington as the principal exterior location. An ex-RAF officer assisted us in collecting a squadron of Mosquito bombers, and we ultimately assembled twelve of these antique airplanes . Of these, only three could fly, and the rest remained earthbound and were used mainly for background set dressing. At one point, the technical advisor, Group Captain T. G. Mahaddie, told me that he had been looking at a list of the world’s air forces and had noted that our air force, composed of these twelve rather sad Mosquitoes , constituted the world’s fourteenth largest. He asked me how I felt being the commander of this armada. I told him I felt uncomfortable with it, and I hoped we could dispose of it as soon as we were through shooting. I had gone to London to see the film launched and to sit in on the casting. A few days before we started production, I was awakened in my hotel room at seven o’clock in the morning by a phone call. Cliff Robertson had just arrived in London and he told me he needed to see me 202 633 Squadron, a New Corporate Entity, Unrealized Projects / immediately. Although we had discussed this film at great length in Hollywood, after he had read the script and accepted it, he now told me that he had been too hasty, and on reading it again on the airplane he found that there were a number of things that now troubled him. He simply couldn’t do it in its present form. He thereby provoked a real crisis , immediately prior to the start...