Facts > Films > Lawrence of Arabia
Lawrence of Arabia (1962) Facts
| Director(s) | David Lean |
| Producer(s) | David Lean (uncredited), Sam Spiegel |
| Featured Cast | Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins, Omar Sharif |
| Total Facts | 99 |
Marlon Brando was signed for the role of T.E. Lawrence in 1960 but dropped out to take the role of Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty. After that, Anthony Perkins was also briefly considered.
David Lean didn't see his first royalty check for the film until 1978.
David Lean happened to catch a B-movie called The Day They Robbed the Bank of England which featured a young Peter O'Toole. He was immediately taken by the striking looking young actor.
David Lean hoped to film in the real Aqaba and the archaelogical site at Petra. Much to his regret, however, the production had to be moved to Spain because of cost overruns and outbreaks of illness among the cast and crew before these scenes could be shot.
David Lean never saw any dailies while filming. He only missed one day of work, though the production endured many illnesses.
David Lean personally supervised the first cuts that brought the film down to 3 hours as he wanted it to enjoy more showings per day. During the 1989 restoration, he would later pass blame for the cuts onto the then deceased Sam Spiegel.
David Lean wanted Malcolm Arnold to score the film, while Sam Spiegel wanted William Walton to do it. Both composers turned down the chance to work on the film.
David Lean watched John Ford's The Searchers time after time for inspiration.
Gamil Ratib was dubbed by Robert Rietty.
Sam Spiegel was much taken with Robert Bolt's successful play A Man for All Seasons. When he and David Lean weren't happy with Michael Wilson's stab at the screenplay, he sent it to Bolt for rewriting. Bolt found the script lacking in good dialog and also character depth. He essentially rewrote the whole thing, using T.E. Lawrence's book 'The Seven Pillars of Wisdom' as his starting point.
Sam Spiegel, the producer of this film, was once known as S.P. Eagle. He had an amazing talent for finding unusual material and hiring exactly the perfect director to execute it. He produced one of Orson Welles's few commercial successes The Stranger. David Lean, the director of this masterpiece, was a well-respected director of moderate-budgeted English films when Spiegel brought him to international prominence with Lean's direction of The Bridge on the River Kwai. He also worked with John Huston, first on We Were Strangers and most notably on The African Queen. Finally he found the funding from Harry Cohn at Columbia for Elia Kazan's controversial On the Waterfront. Perhaps no other independent producer has been associated with so many brilliant film directors on so many diverse and original stories.
Steven Spielberg estimated that to make the film today would cost in the region of $285 million.
Alec Guinness had a life-long interest in T.E. Lawrence, and had played him in a production of Terence Rattigan's play "Ross" on stage. Guinness wanted very much to play Lawrence, but David Lean and Sam Spiegel both told him he was too old. Laurence Olivier was the original choice for Prince Feisal, and Guinness was shifted to that role when Olivier turned it down.
Alec Guinness shaved his head for his role.
Alec Guinness was made up to look like the real Faisal as close as possible. When they were shooting in Jordan, several people who knew the man mistook him for the real thing.
Montgomery Clift coveted the role of Lawrence and actively lobbied for the part with David Lean. 'Sam Spiegel', however, had a low opinion of Clift after the latter's drinking problems surfaced on Suddenly, Last Summer and refused to consider his casting.
Cary Grant was Sam Spiegel's first choice for General Allenby, but David Lean convinced him to cast Jack Hawkins due to his work for them on The Bridge on the River Kwai.
Charles Gray re-voiced some of the vocal performance of Jack Hawkins for the 1989 restored edition
Dilip Kumar was offered the role of Sherif Ali but declined.
Anthony Quinn applied his own make-up and would often arrive in real Arab clothes. At one point, David Lean mistook him for a native on the studio lot and so he sent his assistant to tell Quinn that he had replaced by this new arrival.
Arthur Kennedy replaced Edmond O'Brien in the role of Jackson Bentley, the photo-journalist character based on Lowell Thomas, after O'Brien had a heart-attack on location after filming some scenes. In the early days of the production, when the Bentley character had a more prominent role in the film, Kirk Douglas was considered for the part. However, Douglas wanted a star salary and second billing after Peter O'Toole. Douglas' demands were rejected by producer Sam Spiegel and the Oscar-winner O'Brien was cast in the part. O'Brien filmed the Jerusalem scene, and supposedly Jackson's political discussion with Omar Sharif's character Ali before being felled by his heart attack. He was replaced on short notice by Kennedy, who was recommended to director David Lean by Anthony Quinn. Kennedy had replaced Quinn as King Henry II on Broadway in the play Becket. (Ironically, when "Becket" was made into a film, it was Peter O'Toole who was cast as Henry.)
Arthur Kennedy was an 11th-hour casting choice, replacing Edmond O'Brien who had become ill and had dropped out after rehearsals.
Arthur Kennedy was cast as Edmond O'Brien's replacement largely at the suggestion of Anthony Quinn.
Peter O'Toole and Jack Hawkins became close friends on set, much to David Lean's consternation; Lean thought Hawkins should maintain a fatherly distance from O'Toole to help with the part, but Hawkins "didn't see the point" of Lean's advice. The two frequently went drinking after shooting concluded, including one instance in a Seville restaurant (where Alec Guinness was also present) where a drunken O'Toole threatened a waiter, backing down when the waiter produced a knife. O'Toole and Hawkins would also frequently improvise humorous dialogue on set (often during takes), which infuriated Lean.
Peter O'Toole claimed that he learned more about acting from his few days of filming with José Ferrer than he did in all his years at drama school.
Peter O'Toole claims he never viewed the completed film until nearly two decades after its original release, by which time he was highly impressed.
Peter O'Toole finally mastered his camel-riding technique by adding a layer of sponge rubber under the saddle to ease his bruised backside...a practical innovation quickly adopted by the actual Bedouin tribesmen acting as extras during the desert location filming.
Peter O'Toole is considerably taller and better looking than the real T.E. Lawrence (6'3" to Lawrence's real life height of 5'6"). Noel Coward is rumored to have said, on seeing the premiere, "If he'd been any prettier, they'd have had to call it Florence of Arabia."
Peter O'Toole was nearly killed during the first take of the Aqaba scene. A gun (used to signal the beginning of the scene) went off prematurely, and O'Toole's camel panicked, throwing him to the ground, while the extras on horseback began charging. Fortunately for O'Toole, his camel stayed still and stood over O'Toole, saving him from being trampled.
Peter O'Toole won his career-making (and legendary) part as Lawrence of Arabia after it was turned down by superstar Marlon Brando and a then-unknown Albert Finney. Both director David Lean and producer Sam Spiegel (who produced On the Waterfront, the movie for which Brando and Spiegel won their first Oscars) wanted Brando, but he turned the role down (allegedly saying he didn't want to spend two years of his life riding on a camel). Their second choice Finney was put through extensive screen-tests costing 100,000 pounds, but refused to sign a seven-year contract demanded by Spiegel. O'Toole signed the seven-year contract and got the part.
Peter O'Toole's performance as T.E. Lawrence is the #1 ranked performance of all time in Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time.
Omar Sharif was originally cast to play T.E. Lawrence's guide Tafas.
Jack Hawkins shaved his head to play General Allenby.
Jack Hawkins was originally set to take on the part of Colonel Harry Brighton. When he was shifted over to play Allenby, Anthony Quayle got the part of Brighton.
Anthony Quayle thought the character of Colonel Brighton was an idiot but David Lean told him Brighton was the only honorable character in the film.
Albert Finney's screen tests in Arab costume as T.E. Lawrence are the most requested viewing item in Britain's National Film Archive.
Maurice Ronet was replaced by Omar Sharif in the part of Ali once filming commenced. Ronet was bought out of the film for four times the amount that Sharif was paid for his performance.
José Ferrer had to be talked into taking the role of the sadistic Bey, dubious about it being such a small part. David Lean convinced him that Bey was a pivotal character in T.E. Lawrence's history.
José Ferrer was initially very unsatisfied about the small part he was offered. He only accepted on condition that he be paid $25,000 - more than Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif combined - plus a factory made Porsche. Ironically Ferrer once said about his tiny role that he considered it to be the finest acting of his career.
King Hussein of Jordan lent an entire brigade of his Arab Legion as extras for the film, so most of the "soldiers" are played by real soldiers. Hussein frequently visited the sets and became enamored of a young British secretary, Antoinette Gardiner, who became his second wife in 1962. Their oldest son, 'Abdullah II King of Jordan', ascended to throne in 1999.
T.E. Lawrence declined invitations to film his writings as early as 1926, when Rex Ingram suggested the idea. Later, Alexander Korda tried to launch a version starring Leslie Howard, written by John Monk Saunders and directed by Lewis Milestone. Over the years, such stars as Robert Donat, Laurence Olivier, Cary Grant, Burgess Meredith, and Alan Ladd were all promoted as leads. Screenwriter Michael Wilson finally convinced Lawrence's brother to sell the film rights to Sam Spiegel by submitting his screenplay for approval in 1960.
T.E. Lawrence's brother, A.E. Lawrence, who was also executor of his will, wasn't keen on the film's representation of his brother so he didn't allow the use of his sibling's autobiography title "Seven Pillars of Wisdom".
T.E. Lawrence's brother, Cambridge archaeologist A.W. Lawrence, saw the film and said he didn't recognize his brother in it.
After deciding to cast an unknown actor in the role of T.E. Lawrence, David Lean arranged a screen test for Albert Finney shortly before the release of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, which made Finney a star. The extensive screen test involved costumes, sets and included actors Ferdy Mayne and Laurence Payne, and was shot over four days at a cost of £100,000. In addition to Lean, the test was attended by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth, assistant director Gerry O'Hara, editor Anne V. Coates, producer Sam Spiegel and Anthony Nutting, an expert on Arabian history. It was unanimously agreed that the screen test was excellent, and Finney was offered the part of Lawrence but turned it down, as he did not want to be committed to the long-term contract he would have been required to sign.
After the tremendous success of The Bridge on the River Kwai, producer Sam Spiegel and David Lean were keen to work together on a similarly worthy topic. Initially the pair considered making a film of the life of Mohandas K. Gandhi but soon gave up on that.
Almost all movement in the film goes from left to right. David Lean said he did this to emphasize that the film was a journey.
Although 227 minutes long, this film has no women in speaking roles. It is reportedly the longest film not to have any dialog spoken by a woman.
Although women have no lines in the film, they occasionally can be seen in the background of some scenes. For the Arabian ones, tradition forbade Bedouin women from being photographed so costume designer Phyllis Dalton had some Christian women dress up in the flowing robes.
An urban myth stated that T.E. Lawrence's watch switches from his left wrist to the right in the film. Restorer Robert A. Harris actually found this to be true, but only because the second reel of film had been spliced in reverse.
At one point when filming was progressing far too slowly for his liking, producer Sam Spiegel invited William Wyler to visit the set. He wanted Wyler to encourage Lean to rely more on his second units for filming additional scenes, as he had done on Ben-Hur. The visit was to no avail, however, as Lean was too much of a perfectionist to relinquish control.