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Soldiers of Fortune
Part 2 of The Making of The Wild Geese
Tony Earnshaw continues his 25th anniversary salute to the landmark action epic The Wild Geese.
The making of The Wild Geese, with its relentless, pulse-pounding action sequences was, in its way, every bit as complex as the staging of a real military campaign. For producer Euan Lloyd and director Andrew V. McLaglen, the casting and co-ordinating of the picture came relatively easily; controlling world-class boozers like Richard Burton and Richard Harris did not.
In Burton’s case, a new wife in the statuesque shape of Suzy Hunt meant he was resolutely on the wagon. Harris was a different matter. “I want to shoot down in flames everyone who’s said something to the contrary. The truth is that on that picture Richard Burton and Richard Harris - we called them Richard the First and Richard the Second - were dry from day one to the end,” says Lloyd adamantly. “Andrew had to sign a chit at the end of every day saying ‘Richard Harris has this day performed to contract’. That would be sent by Telex to London. One day Richard the Second came to me on the set looking like death. He said ‘Guv’nor, I was a bad boy last night. I fell off the wagon. It won’t happen again.’ And it didn’t. It takes a big man to do that.”Two of the first people to fly into Tshipise were McLaglen and Roger Moore. The Government-controlled compound where the cast and crew would be housed boasted spacious chalet-style rondavels. Immediately, McLaglen grabbed the biggest one for himself. Then, like a general, he set about drawing up strategies to win his war. It helped to do so with a drink in his hand. It didn’t go unnoticed…
“The first weekend we were there Roger said ‘I’ve got a bottle of Jack Daniels. Shall we have dinner and have a little taste?’ So Roger and I had a few drinks. The next day Burton said ‘The only people I know on this outfit that have hangovers are Roger and you!’ He said it laughingly but also wishingly that it had been him, I think.
“He was such a good boy [on The Wild Geese]. He didn’t drink a bloody drop during the film. To exist, to keep on living, in that heat, people couldn’t drink.“Richard Harris didn’t drink either. He had hypoglycaemia and said ‘I have a choice: drinking and dying, or living. Naturally I took the living.’ He had a couple of little slips behind the scenes. I knew about them but I didn’t tell anybody. Every single day I had to sign Richard's report card, like a teacher grading a student. He'd say 'How’d I do today?’ and I’d say ‘You did great, Richard!’”
The first sequence to be shot in South Africa was a parade ground sequence in which Jack Watson, playing the RSM, runs ragged officers and lower ranks alike. McLaglen remembers it well: “Before the picture started we lined up that whole gang, including the star cast, and put them through their paces – running, hitting the dirt, getting up… I remember Richard Burton throwing himself into the dust! I thought ‘Jesus, this is something people in the outside world ought to see!’ Those guys thought they were in boot camp.”
Ian Yule, acting as Colonel Mike Hoare’s assistant and unofficial weapons expert, also found himself roped in as sergeant major to train up the actors and extras playing the mercenaries. He took the job seriously, but recognised a gag when he saw one. So when Roger Moore came ambling across the parade square one morning, Yule was ready. Self consciously fingering the long hair at the back of his neck, Moore, playing a captain in the film, asked, “Do you think my hair’s all right, sergeant major? The colonel says it’s all right”, referring to Hoare. With all the menace of a battle-hardened soldier of fortune, Yule leaned in close and delivered a blistering ad-lib: “It might be all right for the colonel, sir, but it’s not all right for me. See that kopje up there? When the sparrow farts tomorrow you will go up there at 05.00 and see a tart with a blunt knife and fork and GET YOUR F***ING BARNET CUT, SIR! And when you come back, you’re gonna make Kojak look like the laughing f***ing cavalier!”
It wasn’t always fun and games. Lloyd’s courageous – perhaps even foolhardy – decision to make his picture with an integrated black and white cast in Apartheid era South Africa led to murderous rumblings. John Kani, the Tony Award-winning theatre star who played Sergeant Jesse Blake, has his own memories.
“We were warned ‘Please don’t wander around at night. The whites around here are not happy at all.’ There was a risk that there might be reprisals from the farmers there – that we might be killed. That was the atmosphere,” he says.
The smooth running of the picture was also upset by Mike Hoare, another professional who took the job exceedingly seriously. A career soldier who had run his mercenary unit 5 Commando like a British Army outfit, Kani claims Hoare saw the cast of The Wild Geese almost as imaginary recruits.
“ Mike Hoare, the mad colonel, took an incredible interest in me,” says Kani, now aged 54. “He was very fatherly, very caring, with a twitch of a smile, but you were very aware you were in the presence of a very dangerous person. When he was training me he was showing me where to shoot so as not to waste bullets. He took it too serious – he was really making a soldier out of me. It was an assignment. One time I was talking to him and my rifle was next to a tree, away from me. And he screamed at me! He said ‘You are married to that rifle. A soldier never, never puts a weapon down.’ After a couple of scenes the director said ‘My God, you look like the real thing.’”
The Wild Geese also had, at its core, a liberal message amidst the blood and gore of the battlefield – a message that was, according to German star Hardy Kruger, lost in translation. Kruger, playing Boer officer Pieter Coetzee, is one of the few people unhappy with The Wild Geese. While Lloyd considers it his masterpiece and McLaglen describes it as his favourite picture, Kruger, a lover of Africa who lived on the dark continent for many years, claims the subtleties of his role were sacrificed to speed up the film.
“I am disappointed in The Wild Geese. For this kind of a delicate story in Africa with an element of battle in it, there has to be some shoot-out. But Euan Lloyd, a man I respect very much, chose to hire Andrew McLaglen who’s basically a director for westerns. He brought this element into The Wild Geese that didn’t really belong there – the shoot ‘em up cowboy kind of thing. It overwhelmed the basic theme. There are certain directors, and Andrew is one, who, when it comes to the editing, always puts a moment in the film when somebody talks. I’m a listener as an actor – a reactor – and it was very important to me to listen. I played the whole part like that: I’m listening to this black man on my shoulder, and it’s by listening that I’m beginning to understand that I’m the dumb Boer and he’s the intelligent man that we all need. So Andrew butchered my performance by not understanding that you can play a part by listening. My character didn’t come out because you didn’t see the transformation. I don’t know why Euan allowed him to do it…” McLaglen’s response is blunt: “He’s probably got a point, but it just slowed the picture up too much. It had to go.”
If character was trimmed, then action most definitely was not. Four major sequences underpin the thrills, spills and teeth-rattling energy of The Wild Geese: the assault on an enemy barracks, an airport attack, a fiery bridge explosion and the final chase to the Dakota as Faulkner and his men run for their lives.
The one everyone remembers is the run to the ‘plane – particularly since Richard Harris saved another actor from being killed. The sequence, with some mercenaries already on board and others sprinting to reach them, concludes with Harris’s character being killed. As the scene was being filmed actor Graham Clark stumbled while attempting to clamber into the moving Dakota. In the finished film it’s barely noticeable. In real life it was terrifying.
“Harris was screaming!” says Kani. “The wing at the back of the plane was just about to decapitate Clark, so Richard ran and did the most unbelievable rugby tackle – out of the scene – and brought him down as the back wing went over his head. All our eyes bulged. Richard forgot the shot and went to save this boy. Clark would have been decapitated.”
Ian Yule agrees with his co-star. “It was soft, river sand, and Graham fell. Harris, about three feet behind him, pulled him from under the wheel of the ‘plane. It’s the most courageous thing I’ve ever seen a star do in my life. I have to take my hat off to Richard Harris because he must have known the dangers, and he just brushed it off.”
The film’s interiors were shot at Twickenham Studios near London. For Ian Yule, the former paratrooper and SAS veteran, this period proved to be the most nerve-wracking of the lot. Carrying the entire scene as Sergeant Tosh Donaldson, Yule experienced a crisis of confidence.
“When we got to London for the recruitment scene, I had a reputation for never ‘drying’,” says Yule. “As I walked in there were Harris, Burton, Moore and Kruger. A voice in my head said ‘What are doing here? You left here as a mercenary; now you’re in front of this lot.’ I just couldn’t remember anything. They had an open set to the left and Andrew said ‘Ian, get a hold of yourself.’ Richard came forward, put his hand on Andrew’s shoulder and said ‘I’ll take care of Ian, don’t worry. We’ll go out the back.’ He said ‘What’s the matter?’ and I told him ‘What am I doing here in front of you lot? I just cannot concentrate. It’s static, it’s all dialogue, and I have to carry the scene.’ Burton said ‘Don’t worry about it. It’ll be all right.’ After ten minutes I’d calmed down and we went to do a rehearsal. I said my opening lines and Burton said ‘Stone me, this is like an army medical. Drop your trousers, Tosh’, which was an ad-lib. He was messing about. I was so wrapped up in it I said ‘Yes sir!’ and took my trousers down. I had a pair of tartan underpants on! Everybody cracked up, and the picture went all over the world.”
Perhaps the last word should go to Andrew V. McLaglen. With rumours of a remake flying around the movie world, how does he think the film stands up? He smiles.
“It was a super movie, though not all critics thought so. I would like to think that it was a great film, and forget the political aspects. It was just a hell of an experience and it’s my favourite picture.”
• Dedicated with love and admiration to the late, great Richard Burton. Special thanks to Euan Lloyd, Andrew V. McLaglen, Sir Roger Moore, Ian Yule, John Kani, Elize Rossouw, Gareth Owen and Sally Burton. Behind the scenes photographs courtesy of Ian Yule.
This article originally appeared in Impact magazine.