Lawrence of Arabia – The History of a Film

In 1923 British instructional Films made a short documentary about Lawrence’s desert campaign called Armageddon, which used actual newsreel footage, maps, and some rather wooden re-enactment scenes. Three years later, in 1926, Lawrence actually tried to sell the screen rights of Seven Pillars to the film producer and director, Herbert Wilcox, for £6,000, to help pay off his printing debts. But Wilcox passed on the deal. Later that same year the Irish-American director, Rex Ingram ( famous for his movie ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’, which was one of David Lean’s favourite films), tried to persuade Lawrence to allow him to film Seven Pillars, but by this time Lawrence had already received a generous advance from Cape for ‘Revolt in the Desert’ and no longer needed film money. But the interest in the project didn‘t diminish, and in 1928 it was announced in the trade press (prematurely, as these things usually are) that Revolt in the Desert was to be filmed by M.A. Wetherell, with the cameraman a certain F.A. Young. But the film was never made, although Frederick Archibald ( Freddie) Young did join forces with Lean three decades later as cinematographer on Lawrence of Arabia.

In 1934 Alexander Korda planned to make a film of Lawrences’s book, starring Leslie Howard as Lawrence, and directed by Lewis Milestone of ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ fame, with a screenplay by ‘Wings’ author, John Monk Saunders. This one almost got made, but at the last minute Lawrence withdrew his permission, agreeing over a long argumentative lunch that Korda could only make the film once he ( Lawrence) was dead. And less than twelve months later he was.

With Lawrence’s death, in 1935, the interest in the man, especially by the film and publishing industries, increased hugely. The commercial edition of ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ was published by Cape on the 29th of July 1935 and became an instant best seller with over 100,000 copies sold in England alone by Christmas of that year.

Inevitably Lawrence’s box office potential sored, and once again Korda revived the film project, with a script by Robert Graves, direction by Irishman Brian Desmond Hurst ( a one time assistant to John Ford), with Lawrence played by Walter Hudd. But again the project failed to get off the ground due to the delicate political situation in Palestine.

Korda tried again in 1937 and 1938, this time with direction by William K. Howard, with such names as Robert Donat, Clifford Evans, and a young Laurence Olivier, put forward for the role of Lawrence. But once again the project stalled due to complaints from a very touchy Turkish Government (Britain was desperately trying to keep the Turks on side against the Germans in any future war), even though Korda promised that the Turkish would be depicted as ” …heroic opponents.” But nothing came of it.

After World War II interest started up again, and in 1949 Columbia Pictures put Burgess Meredith’s name forward as a possible Lawrence (can you imagine it?), with Alan Ladd as a second choice. But again a non-starter.

Three years later, in 1952, Harry Cohn of Columbia revived the idea and offered the project to Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who reluctantly turned it down. Cohn then approached the director who’d made Oliver Twist, David Lean. Lean’s reply to Cohn was an enthusiastic one:

” How excited I am by the Lawrence of Arabia idea, I can’t think of a better subject for my first film in America.”

In the same year, 1952, Terence Rattigan approached Lean with his film project about Lawrence, but Lawrence’s brother, Professor A.W. Lawrence, objected to Rattigan’s treatment because of the hints of homosexuality. Lean then decided to back out of the Lawrence project altogether and went off to Italy to make ‘Summertime in Venice’ with Katherine Hepburn and Renato De Rossi.

Rattigan didn’t give up on his Lawrence film, and in 1955 began, with the director Anthony Asquith, to get his script into shape. The men worked throughout 1956 and 1957. By 1958 they had Anatole de Grunwald on board, as a producer for Rank, with Dirk Bogarde signed-up to play Lawrence. Filming was booked to start later in the year, in Iraq, when a revolution broke out (co-starring a very young Saddam Hussein) which made filming impossible there. The project was shelved, and the film never made. But Rattigan still had a script and quickly turned it into his stage play, Ross. And that might have been the end of it had Sam Spiegel not thrown his chewed cigar butt into the ring.

When Spiegel announced that his film was to be adapted from Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, veteran British film producer, Herbert Wilcox, countered by saying he planned to purchase the film rights to Rattigan’s play, Ross, for £100,000 and that production would start in March 1961, with Laurence Harvey – fresh from his success in John Wayne’s Alamo – starring as Lawrence. Spiegel was not amused, and with Wilcox away in America looking for a director, he hired Michael Wilson ( co-writer of Lean’s ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’) to write the screenplay, with David Lean directing.

Spiegel also began working on Prof A.W. Lawrence, and in a meeting with the Professor, David Lean, and the Chairman of Jonathan Cape, G. Wren-Howard, Spiegel asked A.W. Lawrence how much he wanted for the screen rights to Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The professor had no idea, and when Spiegel suggested £25,000 A.W. Lawrence accepted, subject to an acceptable screen treatment. Michael Wilson’s finished script – ironically based mainly on Lowell Thomas’s book, and not ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ – impressed the Professor, and a deal was signed. Spiegel then slapped a court injunction on Wilcox to stop him making his film of Ross. Wilcox was inclined to fight but his city backers wanted no part in a drawn-out and costly litigation case and pulled out. Wilcox dropped his film project, £100,000 worse off than when he started.

In February 1960 Columbia, who were to distribute the film, held a press conference at Claridge’s Hotel in London to announce that the film of Seven Pillars was to be produced by Spiegel’s UK company, Horizon Films, the following year.

As Spiegel and Lean started searching for their Lawrence of Arabia, Rattigan ( now £100,000 better off thanks to Wilcox), and as something of a counter move against Spiegel, signed a contract with the military historian, and friend of T.E. Lawrence, Basil Liddell-Hart, saying he (Rattigan) had used Liddell-Hart’s authorisied biography of Lawrence (a book which had ben authorised by Professor A.W. Lawrence of course) as the basis for his play, ‘Ross’. What Rattigan didn’t know about was the recent deal Spiegel had made with Professor Lawrence, and when Spiegel found out that Rattigan’s aborted film script was again going to be a play he hit the roof and told Professor Lawrence he had to block Rattigan’s stage project. Rattigan responded by saying he would produce the play on TV ( with a potentially huge audience that could seriously effect the popular pull of Spiegel’s film) if a stage option was not open to him. Spiegel was snookered and Rattigan’s ‘Ross’ opened at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, on the 12th May 1960, with Sir Alec Guinness as Ross/Lawrence.

So, twenty-five years after Lawrence’s death, and thirty-seven years after Lawrence’s first printing of ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom’, a dramatic stage work (of a simplistic beauty and thoughtfulness) about T.E. Lawrence had materialised, with another, an epic ( and now iconic film), lumbering into production one year and two days later.

But Spiegel and Lean still had to find their Lawrence.

In 1960 it would take all of David Lean’s experience to see the sense in using the relatively unknown Peter O’Toole to play Lawrence ( as opposed to Brando, who had been an initial thought) and the relatively unknown playwright, Robert Bolt, to come up with the final superb shooting script, and discard the script by Michael Wilson.

Both O’Toole and Bolt were the epitome of the angry young man, both came from similar backgrounds, both were well educated and articulate, both had strong political views, and they both loved to drink heavily. Both men were also willing and best able to turn the images in Lean’s head into a filmic reality by taking a colonial past and slapping it bang into a new and changing 1960s present.

Peter Hall’s soon to be established Royal Shakespeare Company, in Stratford-upon-Avon, was, in 1960, effectively already in existence and smashing all the theatrical norms to pieces. His hammer was the 26 year old Peter O’Toole, who was not only playing Shylock in ‘The Merchant of Venice’, but also Petruchio in ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, and the wild Irish boyoo in the Dirty Duck pub a few yards down the road from the stage door. His wife, the actress Sian Phillips, had also recently given birth to their first daughter, Kate, and was suffering badly from post-natal depression, with “…everything falling apart.”

Around the same time Robert Bolt was also spending a great deal of time with Peter Hall in Stratford, with the director trying to persaude the young playwright to come up with two new plays about the English Civil War which, according to Hall would “…have been an ace subject for him because he was such a wonderful wordsmith, a dramatic architect… [but a man]…who loved money; I mean, really loved it. It was a measure of his status.”

Unknown to Hall Spiegel had already hired Bolt ( for £15,000) to re-write Wilson’s script, and with those all too important rights of Seven Pillars of Wisdom in Spiegel’s back pocket Bolt discarded Wilson’s original script completely, took an axe to Seven Pillars and completely re-wrote Lawrence’s history of his own actions ( which is far enough when we consider that Lawrence had done exactly the same with the real stuff). Bolt – with the added literary incentive of Richard Aldington’s scathing 1955 biography of Lawrence – also hinted very strongly at Lawrence’s homosexuality (or more precisely, his asexuality),which does permeate the film more and more each time you watch it. When he read the finished script Lean considered Bolt’s work to be literate, witty and intelligent, but that Bolt ( and this is a sign of Lean’s insecurity) considered himself to be a very superior person. As a consequence of Lean’s misreading of Bolt the film director never really took to him, feeling intellectually inadequate in his presence. But, thankfully, it was Bolt who told Lean to go take a look at O’Toole in Stratford. And when Lean did, a few days later, he knew he had his Lawrence.

But there was a problem. O’Toole was still under contract to Hall. Spiegel simply told O’Toole to walk out and let Hall sue him. O’Toole did, and as Hall recalls: “…we didn’t have the resources to sue him, but he nearly wrecked the start of the RSC.

In fact O’Toole walked out in November 1960, at the end of the Stratford season, therefore causing no upheavals there. The problem was the forthcoming London season at the Aldwych with O’Toole contracted to play the lead in Anouilh’s ‘Becket’. But even that was soon solved by hiring the Canadian actor, Christopher Plummer. Seen in retrospect it was something of storm in a teacup, but good for publicity. The Daily Mirror, and the Daily Express, amongst others, went to town, and all with articles about the forthcoming film.

Robert Bolt never wrote those two Civil War plays either, and Hall never really forgave him for that, saying “…Bob was destroyed by market forces.”

But now, with the rest of the cast in place – which included such stalwarts as Jack Hawkins, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Quayle and Claude Rains – David Lean began shooting on the 15th May 1961 at Jebel Tubeiq in Jordan, and excluding pre-production, the filming and post-production of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ took twenty months, almost as long as Lawrence’s campaign itself.

In an early scene in Lawrence of Arabia General Murray ( played by Donald Wolfit) confronts Dryden ( played by Claude Rains) in Murray’s office where he is trying to persuade Murray to allow Lawrence to go to Feisal’s desert camp. It is a scene where the old order – Murray – is confronted by a changing, more cynical, more manipulative new order – Dryden – and an even more challenging future – Lawrence. General Murray’s opening line is: ” It’s an intrigue, Dryden, and I do not propose to let an over-weening crass lieutenant thumb his nose at his general officer commanding and get away with it.” This line sets the whole scene ( we are back in the world of Shaw and Rattigan), and we know that Lawrence ( who hasn’t entered yet) is immediately the ‘outsider’, and that he will have to break many rules to get his way and take control. But can he do it? The scene continues with Dryden arguing the Arab case: that they did attack Medina. Murray disagrees: ” It is my considered opinion, Dryden, and that of my staff, that any time spent on the Bedouin will be time wasted. They’re a nation of sheep stealers, and this whole theatre of operations is a side show. The real war is being fought against the Germans, not the Turks. Your Bedouin army would be a side show of a side show.” With that statement we know that Murray is the weak link. With Lawrence’s ( O’Toole’s) entrance we also know that he ( O’Toole) represents hope, and victory, and not just for the future outcome of the war, but for the 1960s. Lawrence then walks up to Murray’s desk and stands looking down at the general without saluting.

MURRAY: Salute! If you’re insubordinate of me Lawrence I shall put you under arrest.

Lawrence salutes badly

LAWRENCE: It’s my manner, sir…
MURRAY: Your what?
LAWRENCE: My manner, sir. It looks insubordinate, but it isn’t really.
MURRAY: No. I can’t make out whether you’re bloody bad mannered, or just half witted.
LAWRENCE: I have the same problem, sir.
MURRAY: Shut up!
LAWRENCE: Yes, sir.
MURRAY: Now, the Arab Bureau seems to think you would be of use to them in Arabia. Why? I can’t imagine! You don’t seem able to perform your present duties properly.
LAWRENCE: I cannot fiddle, but I can make a great state from a little city…
MURRAY: What?
LAWRENCE: Themistocles, sir. A great philosopher.
MURRAY: I know you’ve been well educated, Lawrence. It says so in your dossier. You’re the kind of creature I can’t stand, Lawrence.

It is a great scene, and beautifully acted by O’Toole and Wolfit, and says everything about the changing 1960s, and very little about Lawrence’s exploits in Arabia. And T.E. Lawrence would never have spoken to a superior officer in the way Bolt has O’Toole speak. But that is beside the point. O’Toole was talking for his audience.