Samuel Bronston – The Magnificent 60s

Behind the Scenes: “Tora! Tora!” Tora!” (1970)

In cinematic terms director Richard Fleischer’s work on a Pearl Harbor project had begun in 1962, for a proposed movie called Zackary, the true story of an American spy living in Japan prior to the infamous attack. Fleischer signed a one-year contract with Dino de Laurantiis, the Italian producer behind the director’s previous movie Barabbas (1962). Italian screenwriters had a crack at the tale, then, in a foretaste of things to come, de Laurentiis turned to a Japanese writer whose idea of a screenplay was restricted to a document less than two pages in length. And so began one of the director’s periods in movie purgatory.

After Zackary was abandoned, Fleischer was put to work on four other concepts, none of which made their way to the screen. Worse, the pay-checks stopped coming and Fleischer sued Dino for a million dollars. Next up was The Nightrunners of Bengal from the bestseller by John Master for Samuel Bronston (El Cid, 1961). That, too, ended up in the courts.

If those rollercoasters weren’t enough, Fleischer revived his career with Fantastic Voyage (1966) and nearly sunk it with the financially disastrous Doctor Dolittle (1967), resuscitated his standing again with The Boston Strangler (1968) and dug another commercial hole with Che! (1969).

But he was the first port of call when producer Elmo Williams and his paymaster Darryl F. Zanuck, for whom Fleischer had made The Big Gamble (1961), decided on the biggest gamble in Hollywood history outside of Gone with the Wind (1939) and Cleopatra (1963). In some respects Fleischer was on board as makeweight. For the undeniable directorial star of the show was intended to be legendary Japanese helmsman Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai, 1954). Never mind that the vast bulk of the global paying public had never heard of him, let alone pronounce his name, Kurosawa undoubtedly represented a critical coup. American critics responsible for building appreciation of him in academic circles were unlikely to lambast him for working with Hollywood, especially as, in the even-handed manner of this project, Kurosawa would be telling the story of the attack on Pearl Harbor from the Japanese point-of-view.

In fact, it wasn’t so much one epic, as two parallel films, telling the tale from opposing perspective, edited together.

But just getting to the filming stage had required research of Cecil B. DeMille proportions. Dr Gordon Prang of Maryland University had spent years on the subject, interviewing every participant on either side. He broke down the research into a daily accounting of the year prior to December 7, 1961, and a second-by-second analysis of the day before the attack. Every incident used in the film came from this research.

The bigger problem was assembling a Japanese fleet. Only one destroyer remained of the Japanese World War Two taskforce. The rest had been sunk. To do the movie justice, Twentieth Century Fox had to someow conjure up – just from the Japanese side – six aircraft carriers and the 353 aircraft they transported plus another 27 vessels that made up the escort. Whether the U.S. Navy would have been keen on lending a hand, it wouldn’t be much help either in providing the necessary material since most of its fleet from that period had long since been mothballed.

A million dollars was spent on a set that comprised half a battleship that could float and be towed. The rest was miniatures, but given the scale, most of these would come in around the 40-foot mark. There were 19 Japanese miniatures and 10 American.

There were no Japanese Zero planes either. So 28 Vultee AT-6 aircraft were stretched six feet and adapted to resemble the Japanese plane. The production team raided the country for Flying Fortresses, P-40s and VT-13s that could serve the purpose if reconditioned. Dozens of vehicles from the era period were rescued from junkyards and repaired, restored and repainted.

Coordinating the work of the two directors was always going to be the main problem. How would the styles fit? For the scheme to work did one of Fleischer or Kurosawa have to assume supreme commander status? It didn’t help that neither could speak the other’s language. The few meetings held between the two directors were entirely about the Kurosawa section of the screenplay. To Fleischer’s astonishment, at the rather aggressive nudging of Elmo Williams, Kurosawa made concessions.

Fleischer came up with the practical solution to melding the two separate movies. His suggestion was: don’t do it. He intended showing the Americans as sloppy and overly-relaxed while Kurosawa wanted to emphasize the spit and polish of the Japanese Navy. The contradictory approaches would make each section appear such opposites as to make the entire production seamless.

Surprisingly, the studio won some cooperation from the U.S. government in the shape of the loan of an aircraft carrier. But such goodwill did not go unnoticed and the studio was forced to repay the Defense Department $515,000 for its use. But, in general, the Government was not inclined to cooperate, wanting paid for everything they supplied. Off-duty soldiers and sailors were received standard Hollywood fees to act as extras. Every piece of machinery had to be rented. Tugs, Elmo Williams soon discovered, were available only at extortionate cost.

Water explosions were not only time-consuming but if the production encountered too much delay they become waterlogged and didn’t explode. Extras found it hard not to react to the explosions all around and just as difficult to wait for cues.

The biggest, most expensive and most spectacular, scene was the one battleship, the USS Nevada, that somehow managed to escape the harbor only to be attacked by dive-bombers. As mentioned, the only battleship constructed was only half-built. Part of what was missing were the engines. So it needed to be towed into position and allowed to drift on the current past five strategically-placed cameras with dozens of waters explosions synchronized to split-second timing. There were explosions on the deck, too, and stuntmen ready to be blown overboard. The planning and choreography required to show all hell breaking loose was staggering. The sequence was so expensive it would be impossible to re-stage.

Disaster on a movie set does not require everything possible to go wrong. Just one thing. In this case the ship got underway sooner than expected. With everyone on set working to sight cues, naturally they just did what was expected. Except it was unexpected. And the worst kind of unexpected. The water was ripped apart by explosions, the stuntmen were diving into the water, bullets and bombs were raining everywhere.

And the cameras had not turned an inch. The battle was half over before anything was photographed.

Fleischer and Williams had no alternative but to send their footage to the labs anyway. It would be processed overnight and screened the next morning to studio bosses. Fleischer expected to be fired. Luckily, they had filmed sufficient action for Zanuck to send a congratulatory telegram.

But the Fleischer experience – his section of the movie came in ahead of time – was nothing as bad as the Japanese one. Kurosawa hired business tycoons with no acting experience for “all but the leading roles” in the hope they would finance his next picture. He was as obsessive over detail as David Lean, shutting down production to repaint the set or replace a set of books on a wall. Kurosawa’s production also required a fake battleship, at a cost of $1.6 million. He built it wrong. The rate of filming was catastrophically slow. An unhappy atmosphere turned disastrous when the director turned on an assistant. The upshot was the most feted Japanese director of all time was fired.

Fleischer blamed the studio for forcing Kurosawa to work in the Hollywood manner, interfering with the work of a director who had achieved his fame by being autonomous. The only scene filmed by Kurosawa that ended up in the picture was that of the American ambassador in the US embassy in Tokyo.

Unsurprisingly, many took issue with the notion of making the film at all. In the U.S., Representative John M. Murphy called it “an affront to americans fighting in vietname…every ethical standard is besmisrched by the Hollywood-Pentagon hook-up to produce a film glorifying the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.2

One of the last 70mm roadshows and erroneously viewed as a financial disaster on account of its performance in the United States, in fact the movie made a reasonable profit from its global release and, of course, a fortune in the course of its lifetime, counting television, DVD and streaming.

SOURCES: Richard Fleischer, Just Tell Me When To Cry, (Carroll and Graf, 1993) p227-233, 273-287; “Controversy Boils Up As Tora! Opens,” Desfret News, September 25, 1970, p8C.

The Original Magnificent Showman – Samuel Bronston

Even by Hollywood’s notorious standards, independent producer Samuel Bronston went from boom to bust in record time – three years flat. But by the time he left he had fuelled the roadshow boom, infuriated Hollywood by raising the bar for actor salaries ($1 million for Sophia Loren) and delighted the industry by opening up Spain as a cheap production center. He wasn’t the first indie to make a big splash in the business, David O. Selznick, Edward Small and coming up fast Joseph E. Levine were all significant players.

Whereas most indies raised finance from conventional sources, Bronston, born in what these days is known as Moldova, found investment from an unusual source. In probably the grandest Hollywood wheeze of all time, he became an oil broker. He sold DuPont oil to Spain. But since that country would not pay in American currency, he parlayed the pesetas into moviemaking. Like any industrialist convinced society had not recognized his efforts, Pierre DuPont III reckoned that dining at the Hollywood high table – guests including John Wayne, Sophia Loren and Charlton Heston – might provide sufficient recompense. Bronston used pesetas reaped from commodity broking to make movies and repaid DuPont from the revenue the movies accrued on the international market.

While their first venture John Paul Jones (1959) was a flop it opened up Spain as a potential source of low-cost production at a time when studios, most on the verge of collapse, were desperate to cut expenditure.

Previously, Bronston had enjoyed a low-key Hollywood career, producer, credited or otherwise, on City without Men (1943), Jack London (1943) and A Walk in the Sun (1945) before disappearing off the movie map. But that short career was not without incident, and somewhat marred by the financial repercussions for which he would be later better known. He was sued by the backers of A Walk in the Sun – Hollywood outsiders Walter E. Heller & Co and Ideal Factoring Co. who had ponied up $1 million of the $1.25 million budget. And by a former partner who also claimed he had not been paid.

He resurfaced following a spectacular gambit, gaining access to the Vatican to make a documentary. Using a perceived Papal connection as some kind of approval he spun that into international distribution for his first roadshow King of Kings (1961), a good earner around the world, $24 million gross worldwide on an $8 million budget, and a reissue banker when Easter came round. Spain stood in for the Holy Land and although production began, possibly for publicity reasons, in April 1960, Bronston had begun pre-production two years earlier on developing costumes and sets.

Like Cecil B. DeMille, Bronston exhibited a mania for historical detail. He could bring in experts, make use of local craftspeople, and thousands of extras were available at a fraction of the cost of their Hollywood counterparts, not to mention the Spanish Army at his beck and call. But the set was riven with intrigue, screenwriter Philip Yordan pulling more weight with Bronston than director Nicholas Ray. Bronston soon had a production team established at his mini-studio.

El Cid (1961) was a natural to establish cordial relationships with his national hosts, the character a legend in the country, many events depicted taking place in locations which still existed. But wooing Charlton Heston, at that time the biggest star in the world following the unbelievable success of Ben-Hur (1959), to make this his follow-up to the Biblical epic was a spectacular coup. The fact that he paid more – a reputed $1 million – to secure the services of Sophia Loren proved he could attract the biggest stars and, not as helpful, pay way over the odds.

Costing less than King of Kings and making far more, with superb direction by Anthony Mann and acting by the principals, it was both critically well-received and a massive hit at the international box office, running in roadshow for months. Perhaps more importantly, Bronston’s success attracted the attention of a major Hollywood studio, Paramount, which agreed to partner him in future endeavors and perceived him as the natural successor to Cecil B. DeMille.

Heston returned for 55 Days at Peking, one of the cycle of “siege” pictures – The Alamo (1960), Zulu (1964), Khartoum (1965) fall into the same category – popular if only among filmmakers during the decade. There was a lot more to the picture than art direction but it was not as well-received as the Bronston’s first pair of the decade, and the fact it went through three directors, Nicholas Ray retiring through ill health replaced by Guy Green (A Matter of Innocence, 1967) and finally Andrew Marton who had directed the chariot sequence in Ben-Hur, contributing to the notion of an organization in chaos.

With a $17 million budget, a $5 million U.S. gross ensured there was little profit to be had once the movie had completed the international round. However, luckily for Bronston, roadshows tended to be more popular abroad and could often play far longer in their initial bookings than would occur in the U.S.

When Heston turned down The Fall of the Roman Empire that should have proved a portent. Megalomania or extravagance or an inability to keep a budget in check fuelled the wild overspending on The Fall of the Roman Empire, a title that should have provided a roadshow par excellence, with action and drama of the kind that had driven Ben-Hur. But with a final tab of $24 million it would have required to be the biggest picture of all time just to break even.

By this time, Bronston’s financial mismanagement was catching up with him. Although Paramount kept the faith, signing up for Circus World (1964) and pictures beyond, and with a new partner, Cinerama, ploughing money into the John Wayne three-ringer, Pierre DuPont III had had enough and pulled the plug. Bronston’s debts were in the region of $5 million – $8 million. Subsequent investigation into Bronston’s operation revealed unparalleled levels of waste, unscrupulous hangers-on and the inability to rein back on spending.

Perhaps as critical was that he was churning out roadshow pictures at too fast a rate for control to prove possible. Of course, the unprofitable pictures all went into considerable later profit from sale to television – U.S. networks bid $1 million for El Cid alone in 1966 – syndication, VHS, DVD and streaming, as any star-packed big-budget pictures from that era did. And they have all been reassessed as having greater critical worth than was appreciated at the time.

Bronston consistently argued that he was on the verge of a comeback. He had other irons in the fire – The Nightrunners of Bengal to be directed by Richard Fleischer, Suez helmed by Jack Cardiff, Brave New World with David Niven, The French Revolution, Paris 1900 and Isabella of Spain later linked with Glenda Jackson and John Philip law.

Bronston did work again, credited or otherwise, on Savage Pampas (1965) starring Robert Taylor, Dr Coppelius (1966), Brigham (1977) – reuniting him with writer Yordan – The Mysterious House of Doctor C (1979) which reworked Dr Coppelius and Fort Saganne (1984) with Gerard Depardieu.

His former studios which had gone unsold at auction with a price tag of $1.8 million were bought by the Spanish government and renamed the Luis Bunuel Studios and at one point were scheduled to come out of mothballs for the filming of Rustler’s Rhapsody (1985) starring Tom Berenger.

While Bronston certainly turned Spain into a production powerhouse, he will be perhaps better remembered for his financial finesse. He had a million-dollar guarantee from DuPont but he used it over and over again with different banks without anyone actually stopping to check whether it was already being held as collateral for another movie. In any other world apart form movie-making this would be held up as scandalous behavior, but only in Hollywood would this be applauded as a master showman at work.

SOURCES: SOURCES: Mel Martin, The Magnificent Showman (Bear Manor Media, 2007); “Bronston in 63G Suit,” Variety, February 12, 1947, p9; “Underwriters Reclaim Bronston’s Walk in Sun,” Variety, August 10, 1949, p7; “Sam Bronston’s Film Shot Inside Vatican,” Variety, March 22, 1950, p1; “Bronston’s Brave New World,” Variety, September 4, 1963, p4; “Bronston and Paramount in 4-Picture Deal,” Box Office, December 9, 1963, p7; “Bronston-Cinerama Unite on 2 Films,” Box Office, February 24, 1964, p5; “Bronston’s Comeback Plan,” Variety, June 10, 1964, p3;“Du Pont-Bronston In Accord,” Variety, August 4, 1965, p3; “Bronston Readying Isabela,” Variety, April 13, 1966, p3.

Behind the Scenes: “Circus World / The Magnificent Showman” (1964)

For John Wayne it was the best of deals and the worst of deals. He had signed a six-picture seven-year contract with Paramount. On the plus side the studio paid the entire amount upfront, wiping out the accumulated debts from the debacle of The Alamo (1960). On the debit side, he received only $500,000 per picture, well below his standard price of $750,000. In fact, Paramount could recoup some of its expense by hiring him out at his previous going rate.

Wayne was coming off hits McLintock (1963), Hatari! (1962) and How the West Was Won (1962) but other movies The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and Donovan’s Reef (1963) – the first in the multi-picture deal – had punctured a hole in his supposed box office supremacy. But for maverick producer Samuel Bronston (El Cid, 1961), getting his hands on a star of the magnitude of Wayne was a coup. Originally entitled Those Were the Days, the title switched to the more appealing Circus World.

Bronston was a new-style producer. Apart from a $2.5 million injection by Paramount he financed his pictures by country-by-country advances, and backed by DuPont, hardly the first big company to be seduced by the prospect of becoming a big Hollywood player. Distributors who advanced money in this fashion made hay if the film hit the bull’s eye, but if it flopped they didn’t get their money back. And a flop made it more difficult for an independent producer to raise the dough for his next picture. So Wayne’s involvement was viewed as a guarantee.

Nicholas Ray (King of Kings, 1961) was initially hired to direct followed by Frank Capra (It’s a Wonderful Life, 1946), also made a Bronston partner, who tried to sabotage the script, planning only to shoot the sections he had rewritten. Bernard Gordon (55 Days at Peking, 1963) was credited with the original idea, but when Wayne came on board he brought with him James Edward Grant (The Commancheros, 1961).

Grant was only tempted by the promise of a three-picture deal. The tussle ended with Capra evicted at a cost of $150,000 and Henry Hathaway (North to Alaska, 1960) at the helm. Hathaway instigated a week of rewrites with Ben Hecht (Spellbound, 1945) before settling down to more serious work with Grant.

Initial casting envisaged Rod Taylor (Dark of the Sun, 1968) in the role of Wayne’s partner and would-be lover of Cardinale, but he took the job without reading the script and on realizing it was little more than male romantic lead he bowed out. David Niven (55 Days at Peking, 1963) was initially signed as Wayne’s old buddy Cap but he, too, quit over the script. (Wayne and Taylor got on very well and should have teamed up for The War Wagon, 1967, until Kirk Douglas muscled his way in, later doing so for The Train Robbers, 1973. )

Their replacements John Smith (who had made his debut in Wayne picture The High and the Mighty, 1954) and the veteran Lloyd Nolan were hardly in the same box office league, but shaved cash off the budget.

A bigger concern than hiring a supporting cast was the circus. Bronston recruited famed European outfit Althoff Circus, whose 400 performers ensured the ringside element was authentic. For further realism Bronston added Bob Dover from Ringling Bros. There was no need for specialist horses, Bronston already having 125 trained from The Fall of the Roman Empire to pull circus wagons and for bareback riders.

The entire circus had to be transported by rail on 51 freight cars through the Brenner Pass to Germany and via Switzerland and France to Spain, halting at the Spanish border to unload the whole shebang onto a different train because the gauges didn’t match.

For the picture’s most spectacular scene, the capsizing of the ship transporting the circus, Bronston bought the 250ft long S.S. Cabo Huertas which was heading for the breaker’s yard. Repainted, decorated with circus posters and renamed S.S. Circus Maximus it was all set for a sinking overseen by special effects expert Alex Weldon (El Cid, 1961).

Three hundred tons of water were pumped into the half of the hold furthest away from the dock. The additional weight of 600 extras was enough to flip the ship on its side. Four 50-ton steam winches with steel cables kept the ship upright until it was time for action.

Female extras who were going to end up in the drink were fitted with corsets made of cork while the men wore cork belts hidden under their costumes. The Spanish Coast Guard cleared the harbor of debris and a local fleet of boats, just out of camera view, stood by for rescue. Seven divers patrolled the harbor bottom in case the cork failed to keep actors and extras afloat. Three sets of costumes were created for each participant so they would be kept dry as long as necessary.

Hathaway completed the scene without a single injury. He called it “the greatest job of its kind I have ever been involved in.” Bronston, who was as much a detail man as Cecil B. DeMille, ensured the band played instruments from the period

The picture went in front of the camera in September 1963 with Wayne due to end his commitment on December 18. But severe flooding in Spain knocked the movie off schedule and it went way over budget, running on until March 1964, the finishing touches added in London, the budget hitting $9 million.

Rita Hayworth, who hadn’t made a picture in two years, proved a handful, usually late on set, committing the cardinal sin of not learning her lines and, probably as worse, being rude to everyone

At just 135 minutes long, Circus World wasn’t originally envisaged as a roadshow until Cinerama put an estimated $2.5 million into the project, which defrayed the costs. By the time that partnership was announced, it was too late to shoot it in the Cinerama process. The 35mm Super Technirama footage was blown up to 70mm for showing in 60 U.S. theaters boasting the iconic Cinerama curved screens. Everything in Cinerama at that point was roadshow. And they had two more projects lined up with Bronston, Vittorio De Sica’s Paris 1900 and Jack Cardiff’s Brave New World, neither of which were made. Bronston also had another two movies in preparation with Paramount: The Nightrunners of Bengal to be directed by Richard Fleischer and Suez, neither made either.

Roadshow suited Paramount which had not used that method of premium release since The Ten Commandments (1956). In 1963 it had set up a roadshow department to handle the forthcoming Becket (1964) and The Fall of the Roman Empire, which were proper roadshow length of, respectively, nearly 150 minutes and over three hours. But, initially, Circus World did not fall into the roadshow category as far as Paramount was concerned. Only the arrival of Cinerama as an investor made it imperative.

To avoid a title clash with the ultra-successful It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), British distributor Rank changed the title to The Magnificent Showman. That alteration did little to improve its box office, opening at London’s Coliseum for a “NSG” (not-so-good in Variety parlance) $11,200, not much more than The Fall of the Roman Empire in its 17^th week, How the West Was Won (90^th week) and Cleopatra (51^st). Nonetheless it ran there for seven months, followed by a mass general release in the U.K. with a record number of prints. In the U.S., on the eve of general release in April 1965, Paramount considered a title change to Wild Across the World and a switch of marketing emphasis to John Wayne and action.

Audiences didn’t bite, certainly not enough to recoup the budget, and far from enough to prevent Bronston’s operation sliding into liquidation.

SOURCES: Scott Eyman, John Wayne, The Life and Legend (Simon & Schuster, 2014) p379-385; Mel Martin, The Magnificent Showman (Bear Manor Media, 2007), p153-168; Sheldon Hall, Introduction to Circus World, Bradford Widescreen Festival, 2022; “Rank To distribute New Bronston Pic,” Variety, September 26, 1962, p15; “Althoff Circus Logistics for Bronston’s Film,” Variety, September 25, 1963, p4;“New Roadshow Dept at Paramount,” Variety, November 13, 1963, p3; “Bronston and Paramount in 4-Picture Deal,” Box Office, December 9, 1963, p7; “Circus World Filming in London,” Box Office, February 17, 1964, p14; “Bronston’s Circus Goes Cinerama,” Variety, February 19, 1964, p4; “Bronston-Cinerama Unite on 2 Films,” Box Office, February 24, 1964, p5; “Special Mass Release for Showman,” Kine Weekly, May 28, 1964, p3; “Paramount Retains Circus World Title,” February 24, 1965, p3.

55 Days at Peking (1963) ***

Imperialism is hard to stomach these days but at the start of the twentieth century it was rampant and as shown in this picture not just restricted to the main culprit, the British. China was Imperialism Central, round about a dozen nations including the USA and Russia claiming control of sections of the country or its produce. So they had all set up diplomatic shop in Peking. And the film begins with an early morning roll call of national anthems before this domination by outside interests in shattered by rebellion.

Just as hard to stomach, of course, was the movie mainstream notion in those days that all rebellions must perforce be put down regardless of how put-upon the peasant classes were. Audiences had to rally round people in other circumstances they would naturally hate. So one of the problems of 55 Days at Peking is to cast the rebels (known as Boxers) and the complicit Chinese government in a bad light while ensuring that those under siege are not seen as cast-iron saints. There’s no getting round the fact that the rebels are shown as prone to butchery and slaughter while the Chinese rulers are considered ineffective and traitorous.

Producer Samuel Bronston built his Peking set on a 250-acre site at a ranch 16 miles from Madrid, Spain, near the foot of the Sierra Guadarrama mountains. To ensure authenticity, a canal was enlarged to supply 15,000 gallons of water a day from a specially-prepared reservoir holding half a million gallons. Over 1.3 million feet of tubular steel – all the scaffolding available in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville and Valencia – was used in the set construction.

So it’s left to the likes of Charlton Heston as the leader of U.S. Marines stationed in the city to bring some balance to proceedings. “Don’t get the idea you’re better than these people because they can’t speak English,” he expounds. David Niven plays the British Consul trying to keep this particular league of nations onside while negotiating with one hand tied behind his back – “we must play this game by Chinese rules” – with the Chinese Dowager Empress (Flora Robson) while knowingly endangering his wife (Scottish actress Elizabeth Sellars, a one-time big British star) and two children. Ava Gardner is an unscrupulous Russian baroness with little loyalty to her home country.

To ensure journalists provided authentic coverage of the siege, press materials included a copy of the detailed map printed in the Saturday October 13, 1900, edition of British daily newspaper “The Times” and its account of the action. Producer Samuel Bronston claimed that some of the costumes worn by Flora Robson in her role as the Dowager Empress were actual ones worn by the empress and purchased from an Italian family who had connections in the Italian embassy during the siege.

The picture is one-part action, one-part politics and one-part domesticity, if you include in the last section Heston’s romance with Gardner, Niven’s guilt when his son is wounded in an attack and Heston’s conflict over a young native girl (Lynne Sue Moon) fathered by one of his own men who is then killed. Two of the best scenes are these men coping with parental obligation, Niven coping with a wounded son, Heston finding it impossible to offer succour to the child.

The action is extremely well-handled. The siege goes on longer than expected when the expected troops fail to arrive, tension rising as casualties mount and supplies fall low. As with the best battle pictures, clever maneuvers save the day. Two sections are outstanding. The first has Heston marshalling artillery to prevent the Chinese gaining the high ground. The second is a daring raid – Niven’s idea, actually – through the city’s sewers on the enemy’s ammunition dump. Personal heroism is limited – Heston volunteers to go 70 miles through enemy territory to get help but has to turn back when his men are wounded or killed.

The film was not released in 70mm roadshow in the United States as originally planned but like “El Cid” went straight into general release in a 35mm version. but it was seen in 70mm in Europe. Among suggested promotional activities were a “guess-the-flag” competition since 11 nations were involved. The tie-ins included a Corgi paperback, the original soundtrack by Dmitri Tiomkin and four singles – Andy Williams singing the theme song “So Little Time,” The Brothers Four with “55 Days at Peking” (also recorded by Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen) and Tommy Riley with “Peking Theme.”

There’s a fair bit of stiff upper lip but while Heston, in familiar chest-baring mode, has Gardner to distract him, Niven is both clever, constantly having to outwit the opposition and hold the other diplomats together, and humane, drawn into desperation at the prospect of his comatose son dying without ever having visited England. Gardner moves from seducer to sly traitorous devil to angel of mercy, shifting out of her beautiful outfits and glamorous hats to don a nurse’s uniform, at the same time as shifting her outlook from selfish to unselfish. All three stars acquit themselves well as does Flora Robson in a thankless role.

This was the third of maverick producer Samuel Bronston’s big-budget epics after King of Kings (1961) and El Cid (1961) with a script as usual from Philip Yordan and directed by Nicholas Ray.

All in all it is a decent film and does not get bogged down in politics and the characters do come alive but at the back of your mind you can’t help thinking this is the wrong mindset, in retrospect, for the basis of a picture.

Many of the films from the 1960s are to be found free of charge on TCM and Sony Movies and the British Talking Pictures as well as mainstream television channels. This one I noticed is available on YouTube at the point where I was reviewing it. But if this film is not available through these routes, then here is the link to the DVD and/or streaming service.