The Elephant to Hollywood Read online

  1961 began well with a TV play, Ring of Truth, followed by a two-week run of a play called Why the Chicken? (don’t ask – I did and was none the wiser) written by John McGrath, a theatre and TV director who had become a good friend, and directed by Lionel Bart, also by now a friend. That was good, but I was very disappointed not to get the part of Bill Sykes when Lionel Bart went on to do Oliver. I thought it was made for me and it would have been good steady work at a time when that was hard to come by. But it just goes to show, you never know how things are going to work out. I can see now it was a blessing in disguise: the show ran for six years and was still running the day I drove past the theatre in my Rolls Royce, after a triumphant success not only in Britain but also in America with Alfie. I shuddered as I passed the billboard: that actor had been up there in lights since 1961. I’d have missed out on so much.

  Although I couldn’t see it then (and in fact it would have taken a genius to work it out), the pieces in the jigsaw that led to Alfie and stardom were beginning to fall into place. As a result of Why the Chicken? (I know, I know . . .), John McGrath cast me in his next TV show, The Compartment, a two-handed psychological thriller about two men – a posh git and a Cockney – sharing a railway carriage. Now this really was made for me – the posh git won’t respond to the Cockney’s friendly approach and by the end of the forty-five minutes the Cockney tries to kill him. Perfect – summed up everything I thought about posh gits. Perfect, too, because it was basically a monologue – and on live TV. And perfect, ultimately, because a lot of influential people saw it and realised that I could carry an entire show. But even I hadn’t quite understood the significance of The Compartment until a few weeks after the play had been broadcast. Terry Stamp and I were walking down Piccadilly when someone called out to us from the other side of the road. We turned round – and it was Roger Moore. Roger Moore, star of The Saint and Ivanhoe, the ultimate debonair, suave, English hero. We looked around to see who he was hailing, but he was coming over to us. ‘Are you Michael Caine?’ he asked me. I nodded. ‘I saw you in The Compartment,’ he said, ‘and I want to tell you that you’re going to be a big star.’ He shook my hand, smiled and strode on. I just stood there with my mouth open. If Roger Moore said so – perhaps it really might be true.

  And Roger was not the only one. Dennis Selinger, the top actors’ agent in Britain, had seen The Compartment and taken me on. And Dennis was one of the key pieces in the puzzle. He knew that I was short of money but he was determined that at this point in my career I should appear in the right shows, not ones that merely made money. It was he who steered me towards Next Time I’ll Sing to You by James Saunders. It was clearly going to be a hit with the critics, which meant that the pay was terrible, but Dennis could see just what rave notices it was going to get – and he was right. It transferred to the Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly, our wages doubled and I finally got the West End at the age of thirty. What’s more, all sorts of influential people came to see the show, including Orson Welles who came backstage to congratulate me, which was a bit overwhelming. But even more significantly for me, one night, Stanley Baker, the star all those years ago of A Hill in Korea, stopped by my dressing room. Stanley was now one of the biggest British film stars and he told me that he was starring in and producing a film called Zulu about the 1879 battle of Rorke’s Drift between the British army and the Zulu nation, and they were looking for an actor to play a Cockney corporal. ‘Go and see Cy Endfield in the bar of the Prince of Wales Theatre tomorrow at ten and give it a try,’ he said, and wished me luck.

  I’ve always thought that life swings on small, sometimes insignificant incidents and decisions. When I got to the theatre at ten the next morning, Cy Endfield, a round, slow-speaking American director, said he was sorry, but he’d already given the part to my friend James Booth, because he thought he looked more Cockney than I did. I was used to rejection by now, so I just shrugged. ‘That’s OK,’ I lied and turned and began to walk back towards the door. The bar at the Prince of Wales Theatre is very long – and that’s why I became a movie star, because just as I reached the end, Cy called out, ‘Can you do a posh British accent?’ I stopped just before the door and turned round. ‘I was in rep for years,’ I said. ‘I played posh parts many times. There’s no accent I can’t do. That’s easy,’ I said, fingers crossed behind my back. ‘You know,’ said Cy, peering at me down the length of the bar, ‘you don’t look anything like a Cockney. You look like one of those faggy officers. Come back.’ I glanced in the mirror behind the bar. He was right. I was six foot two, slim, with blond curly hair and blue eyes. Jimmy Booth looked like everyone’s idea of a tough Cockney, which he was; I was a very tough Cockney, too, but I didn’t look like it. I came back – and I never looked back. ‘Can you do a screen test with Stanley on Friday morning?’ Cy asked. ‘You’d be playing the part of a snobbish lieutenant, Gonville Bromhead, who thinks he’s superior to everyone, especially Stanley. Do you think you could handle that?’ Perhaps it was also something to do with Cy being an American; he had no inherent British class prejudice that might have made him think a working-class actor couldn’t play an officer on the big screen. I thought back to national service; I thought back to Korea. I was quite confident I could handle that.

  I wasn’t so confident by the time Friday came around. I stumbled through the screen test, fluffing my lines, sweating with fear despite all Stanley’s help and Cy’s patience. At last we were done and I stumbled up the steps and set out to spend the weekend getting completely wasted before hearing the result on Monday morning. What I hadn’t bargained on was bumping into Cy Endfield at a party on Saturday night. He seemed to be avoiding my eye. It didn’t look like good news. Nonetheless, while he was still at the party I did my best to remain sober. Just as he was about to go, he finally came over to me. ‘I’ve seen the test,’ he said, ‘and you were appalling.’ I swallowed. It was going to be hard to bounce back from this one. ‘But you’ve got the part,’ he went on. ‘We go to South Africa in three weeks.’ I gaped at him. ‘Why did you give me the part if the test was so bad?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know, Michael,’ he replied. ‘I really don’t know – but I think there’s something there . . .’ He walked away and I threw up all over my shoes.

  I had been a private in the army and I had my own experiences of a certain Lieutenant from the Queen’s Royal Regiment to draw on for the characterisation of Gonville Bromhead. The man was, to put it bluntly, a complete arse – very pompous and very posh. He wasn’t a stupid man, he just had the attitude that we were the ‘little people’ who had to be dealt with and he was simply born to rule us. It wasn’t personal on either side, but my encounter with him and others like him certainly fostered my loathing of class prejudice and I was delighted to be able to get my own back.

  But I did have a problem. I had known lots of officers and I knew exactly how they had behaved towards me, but I had no idea how they behaved towards each other and Zulu was a picture about a relationship between two officers. So in the weeks before I left for South Africa, I arranged to go for lunch every Friday in the Grenadier Guards officers’ mess. The Guards were on the whole very tolerant of having this soppy actor hanging about, but I noticed that they gave the job of looking after me – which no one else wanted – to the youngest and newest member of the mess, a young second lieutenant called Patrick Lichfield. Neither of us knew it then, but Lord Lichfield and I would become great friends later in the sixties when he left the army and took up photography.

  Perhaps I should also have asked the Guards for a bit of help with the horses. Riding lessons had been a bit hard to come by down at the Elephant but I’d told Cy Endfield confidently that I could ride. What I had omitted to mention was that I’d only actually done so twice and both times had been in Wimbledon. I’d booked lessons on the Common, but I only got as far as the High Street. I fell off the horse in front of a bus on the first day and I fell off the horse in front of a bicycle the second day (with far more damaging consequences), an
d I didn’t go back for the third. It wasn’t that I didn’t like horses – Lottie, the big old mare we’d had on the farm in Norfolk used to follow me round like a dog – but I’d never done much more than sit on her with my legs sticking straight out at the side. Through some equine sixth sense the brute of a horse I was sitting on for my first shot in Zulu seemed to know this and took an instant dislike to me. The feeling was mutual. We were filming a long shot of me coming back alone to the British military encampment after a hunting expedition and I was told to walk the horse back towards the camera slowly. It sounded simple enough, but the horse refused to budge. ‘Kick it up the backside!’ yelled Cy through the intercom and the prop man gave it a whack. The horse moved all right – just not forward. It reared up on its back legs and started prancing around with me clinging on for dear life. ‘Cut!’ Cy shouted. ‘You’re not auditioning for the fucking Spanish Riding School!’ The prop man calmed the horse down and we started off again, walking along a path down the side of the hill. All was going according to plan until we rounded a bend. The horse, by now as much of a nervous wreck as I was, must have caught sight of its own shadow on the hillside and with an ear-splitting whinny it leapt off the path and started hurtling towards a twenty-foot drop, with me yelling all the way. The prop man only just managed to catch up and grab the bridle and drag us both to a halt before we tipped over the edge. I’d really wrenched my back in the process and the prop man relayed this to Cy over the intercom. ‘Oh for God’s sake!’ I could hear Cy saying irritably. ‘We’ve got to get this shot today – the sun’s going down. Can you ride?’ he asked the prop man. The prop man could. And so my first appearance in my first ever major motion picture is in fact not me at all, but a prop man called Ginger in my hat and cape.

  I was a bit aggrieved that no one seemed bothered about my back at the end of that day’s filming – or my knees, the following day, when the same horse, who had obviously really got it in for me, threw me into a pond. I brought this up with Stanley Baker. ‘Simple,’ he said. ‘You’ve only done two scenes and at this point we could replace you quite easily – almost more cheaply than we could replace the horse or your clothes.’ I opened my mouth to protest, but he went on, ‘The more shots you’re in, the more careful we’ll be about you – until the final scene when, once again, we won’t care a shit. A golden rule, Michael,’ he said, ‘never do a dangerous stunt on the last day of a picture.’ And I never have.

  Things went more smoothly after that, but even so I was dreading the initial rushes. The film had to be sent to England to be processed so I had two weeks to get nervous about how my performance would come across on screen. The stakes were high; this was my big break. Eventually the big day came and I sat in the screening room surrounded by fellow-actors and cameramen and the other technicians from the set. The projectors whirred into action, the screen flickered and suddenly a huge face appeared and began to drone on in a ridiculously clipped British accent. I broke out in a sweat, my heart pounding. I wasn’t just bad – I was very bad. Career over, I thought. ‘Who told that silly bastard to pull his hat down over his fucking eyes?’ I heard someone say just behind me. I was outraged – this was a skilful piece of characterisation! I had worn a pith helmet that shaded the top half of my face and I would tip my head back to allow the sun to catch my eyes when I wanted to make a particular point. Not that it mattered any more; I’d be on the first plane home. Once again I threw up all over my shoes and rushed out.

  Next evening, determined to face the music like a man, I went down to the bar in the hotel we were all staying in, lined up a couple of drinks and waited for Stanley and Cy to come in from the day’s shooting. ‘Hey – not bad, kid!’ Stanley said as they breezed by. ‘Don’t worry – you’ll get better.’ I stood looking after them, mouth open. Did they really mean it? I downed the drinks and decided that I needed to work on my paranoia.

  I wasn’t too successful. A few days later, one of the secretaries from the production department beckoned me in as I was passing by. She was gorgeous, and thinking my lucky day had come, I followed her in to her office anticipating a bit of action. Instead, she rather nervously handed me a telegram. It had come from a senior executive in Paramount head office in London. ‘Fire Michael Caine doesn’t know what to do with his hands.’ Again I was outraged. Searching around for someone on whom to model the character of Lieutenant Bromhead, a man from an immensely privileged background, I had lit upon Prince Philip. The first thing I’d noticed about him was that he always walked with his hands clasped behind his back because, I realised, he never had to do anything for himself. He never had to open doors, he never had to use his hands to gain attention – he would always be the centre of any conversation – and he was surrounded by bodyguards so he’d never have to use his hands in self-defence. This was yet another piece of skilful characterisation wasted on an unappreciative audience! Was I doomed always to be misunderstood?

  Outrage aside, I was certain that Stanley really would have no alternative but to fire me this time and I hung about miserably for the next two days waiting for the axe to fall. The problem was that I couldn’t reveal I had seen the telegram without getting the secretary into trouble. Eventually I cracked and confronted him. ‘I know you’re going to fire me,’ I began, concocting some wildly improbable tale of having accidentally seen the telegram in his office, ‘and I completely understand and I’ll go at once,’ I finished in a rush. He stood there for a moment and I realised he was actually angry. ‘I am the producer of this movie, Michael,’ he said. ‘Have I fired you?’ ‘No, Stan,’ I said. ‘Then get on with your job – and stop reading my fucking mail or I will fire you!’ So I really was going to be in the movie. This time I managed to get to the gents before I was sick on my shoes.

  It wasn’t just my first time on a major movie, it was my first time in Africa – a continent I love and would return to later with my friend Sidney Poitier to make The Wilby Conspiracy. The landscape of the Drakensberg mountains was powerful enough, and the wildlife was incredible, but it was the African people who really made the filming of Zulu so memorable. Zulu tells the story of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift between a small detachment of a Welsh regiment (hence Stanley Baker’s interest in the incident) and the Zulu nation, in 1879.

  We were fortunate not only to have Chief Buthelezi, the head of the Zulu nation, playing the Zulu leader, but a Zulu princess as our historical consultant, which meant that the battle lines of the Zulu forces were drawn up exactly as they had been. This level of authenticity made a huge difference to the impact of the film – I still think the battle scenes are some of the best I have seen in any movie. Certainly my first sight of those two thousand Zulu warriors coming over the hills and into the valley where we were filming was unforgettable. They wore their own battle dress with high head dresses and loin cloths made of monkey skins and lions’ tails and as they approached they began beating their spears on their shields and singing a slow lament mourning the dead in battle. It was an incredible sight and sound. What it must have seemed like to the handful of British soldiers holding down their position at Rorke’s Drift I can only begin to imagine. Their bravery resulted in the award of eleven Victoria Crosses in one day – a unique event in British military history. Of course, as anyone who knows their British military history will have instantly spotted, the final Zulu assault on Rorke’s Drift didn’t involve just two thousand warriors – there were six thousand. Stanley and Cy were four thousand short. Cy Endfield, ever resourceful, had the solution. In the last scene the camera pans round to show the Zulus lining the hilltops in the distance, looking down on the British below. It’s an awesome sight and you would never guess that each of the two thousand warriors up there was holding a bit of wood with two shields and head dresses stuck on the top, instantly trebling the numbers. Genius – and nearly forty years before Peter Jackson’s spectacular CGI special effects in Lord of the Rings.

  The Zulu warriors weren’t the only Africans on set. One of the scenes invol
ved a traditional women’s tribal dance and we’d recruited a mix of dancers, some from the tribal lands and some who had left and gone to work in Johannesburg. There was going to be a problem with the censor back home, though, as the Zulu costume involved nothing more than a little bead apron. Cy Endfield, resourceful once again, organised the costume department into making two hundred pairs of black knickers, which would appease the British Board of Film Censors while retaining a veneer of authenticity. He’d just managed to persuade the tribal dancers to wear the knickers when he was told that the city girls were insisting on also wearing bras. This was the ultimate test for a film director: how to get knickers on one set of dancers and bras off the others. He’d just about got it sorted it and the camera was rolling when the cameraman shouted, ‘Cut! We’ve got a lady here with no drawers on!’ The culprit was pulled out of the line. ‘What’s the problem now?’ Cy asked the translator, exasperated. The translator went over and spoke to the dancer. ‘She’s not used to them,’ was the reply when she came back. ‘She just forgot.’ That’s the first and last time I’ve heard that excuse on a film set . . .