David Lean and the Making of Lawrence of Arabia
By Kevin Brownlow
For many people, David Lean symbolized what is best about cinema, a filmmaker who could make films that were both grand epics and intimate, intelligent dramas.
If David Lean were still alive today, he would have just turned 100. He was born in the English town of Croydon on 25 March 1908 and, because of his strict Quaker parents, was not allowed to watch movies as a child. After considering following his father's footsteps and becoming an accountant but instead at age 19 got a job at a film studio. He worked as a tea boy, messenger and clapperloader before graduating to the role of film editor, working for the great British directors of the era like Michael Powell and Anthony Asquith. His first four films as director were all collaborations with Noel Coward, including the much beloved Brief Encounter (1945). He followed this success with two highly acclaimed Dickens adaptations, Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948). After spending the first half of the 1950s continuing to make films within the structure of the British film industry Lean made the UK-US co-production Summertime (1955), a Venice-set romantic comedy starring Katherine Hepburn. Next came The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), a wartime drama starring Lean's regular star Alec Guinness that was produced by the legendary Sam Spiegel. The film won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (Guinness) and this success lead to Spiegel and Lean re-teaming for Lawrence of Arabia (1962), a biopic of the British adventurer starring a then-unknown debutant, Peter O'Toole. Lean repeated the success of his previous film, winning huge critical praise and winning another seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director once again. (O'Toole was nominated for Best Actor, but lost out to Gregory Peck for To Kill A Mockingbird.)
In many ways, Lawrence of Arabia represented the pinnacle of Lean's career. While Lean would continue to make wonderful epic films like Doctor Zhivago (1965) and Ryan's Daughter (1970), nothing before, and perhaps nothing since, has filled the screen with such majesty, expanse and hope as the never ending deserts of Arabia.
In 1997, Faber and Faber published Kevin Brownlow's biography David Lean: A Biography, a book that began as an autobiography told to Brownlow. Recounting Lean's many dramas on and off the screen, Brownlow's book demonstrates the endless struggle to bring one's vision to a film. To celebrate 100 years of Lean, we are presenting part of the Brownlow's celebrated biography. The following is an excerpt from Chapter 30 of David Lean: A Biography with the option to download the rest as a pdf file.
Download a PDF of Chapter 30 from David Lean: A Biography
On one of my visits to Narrow Street, I found David sitting in the garden with Sebastian, his gardener. The following conversation was under way:
"I think women are at least, if not more sexually active, more sexual than men," said David. "Men are like goats, in and out, bang, bang, good afternoon. But women really have the lingerers about them."
"But women have that maternal instinct that is alien to man, or a lot of men," said Sebastian.
"What, they don't like being treated as mummy's boy, you mean?"
"No," said Sebastian, "I think women look for a more stable situation, whereas a lot of men, because of their basic sexuality, go out and have casual little affairs."
David said, "You see, casual affairs doesn't mean basic sexuality. I think it means randy little cat. I don't really think that means anything. I mean, most women are much more deeply sexual than men."
"I don't know," said Sebastian, who was gay. "I can't really speak from experience."
"I think pretty well the whole of this creativity is sex. There's no two ways about it. And if you want to go and make a good movie, well, you know, the fact of it is that sex is terribly important. If you want to make a good movie, get yourself a new, wonderful woman and that movie will be fifty if not seventy percent better than it would have been if she hadn't existed. It lights everything up. I mean, I'm too old for that now, but…"
"Doesn't it take up all your energy?" I asked.
"No, it's very energising," said David. "You see, I think lack of energy and tiredness is sexual failure. If you've had a miserable affair with somebody, you're tired out."
I said, "But one hundred percent of your time is devoted to that picture.
How can you also have an affair with somebody?"
"I can tell you you can."
"I'll take your word for it," I said.
"You'll have to."
There followed a David Lean pause. "No, you're right up to a point. Of course you are. And you've got to have a very understanding woman, and you've got to have a woman who loves the movie that you're doing."
Barbara Cole was a no-nonsense New Zealander in her early forties. During the war she married an RAF pilot who was shot down over Germany when her son, Peter, was a couple of months old. Money was short, she had a young brother and her mother was suffering from tuberculosis, so she had to earn her living. She went into the film industry as a continuity girl, at first in documentaries and then in "quota quickies". She graduated rapidly into A features, such as The Square Ring, The Maggie and Hunted.
Married to the head of a television company in the Midlands, she started her own documentary-advertising company. When her husband began an affair with an actress, she left him and went to London. A friend introduced her to Spiegel and she was assigned to Lawrence as continuity girl.
Barbara flew out to Jordan with the camera crew. Because it was such a long flight she decided she had to sleep — even though she could never normally sleep on planes and took a sleeping tablet. All that happened was that she grew more and more exhausted, and woozier and woozier.
Arriving in Amman, it was too early to go to bed. Someone decided she needed a tomato juice.
"I drank this thing, realised it was vodka, and I was soon absolutely drunk. I thought, 'If I can stand up, I'm going to my bedroom to sleep this thing off.'
Before I could do that, David Lean walked down the hall towards me and sat down beside me. He said, 'Hello, you must be Barbara.'
"I thought, 'Oh, God, I hope he doesn't find out I'm drunk.' So I sat there and answered his questions and eventually he got up and walked away and I felt very happy. If he'd realised I was drunk I'd have been back on the aeroplane the next morning."
Very soon, Barbara went down to Aqaba where Spiegel's boat was moored in the bay. Her job, initially, was to assist Bolt with the script.
"David came on board and stood behind me. I'm not the greatest typist, and I thought, 'I'm going to get through this page without a mistake.' I managed it and he said, 'Oh, that was very good.' He little knew how nervous I felt.
"Then we went out to camp. David wanted the main crew round his caravan and he wanted my tent in a certain place. A man from the production office said, 'I don't know what's going on between you two,' and I thought, 'Don't be stupid.' In the evenings, David started asking me up to his caravan to take notes and I still didn't realise what was going on. I was attracted to him, obviously, he was a very handsome man. Then one night he tried to kiss me and I said, 'Now look, David, I'm not going to have one of these film romances. In two months we'll be quarrelling and I'll be sent home. I don't want anything like that.'
"He said, 'No, no, you don't know me. I'm a very faithful man.' Which, knowing his history, made me laugh to myself."
At the end of one of the three-week stints, Barbara went to Beirut on her own. David had offered her a lift in the company plane, but Barbara decided she wanted to be alone.
"The crew were very cross with me because David decided to stay behind and do a recce. When I got to the hotel the man on the desk said, 'We've been told that anything you want you can charge to your hotel bill.'
"I thought, 'Oh dear, here we go.' I stayed there a day by myself. Next morning they said, 'We've been told to advise you that David Lean is flying in today.'
"I thought, 'That's it. I give in.' So that's when we started having an affair. And from then on we lived quite openly for the next seven years."
Some members of the company found it a useful relationship. Costume designer Phyllis Dalton said she could suggest something to Barbara and if David woke up in the middle of the night worrying about a scene, she knew just what to, say. "The only tricky bit," said Dalton, "was when Leila came to stay at Aqaba. Everyone kept quiet."
"David very nicely said that it was thanks to me that he got through Lawrence," said Barbara. "He was a very passionate man, making love to me at night and working all day. People say that an artist is a selfish person. Well, all geniuses have to march down this narrow corridor and not put off by things left or right. Outside of work I think he was a very generous, sharing and caring person. At work, he wanted what he wanted."
Inside the caravan was a large bed, designed by David and Leila, a couple of easy chairs, a work table and a gramophone on which David played records of Stephane Grappelli and Erroll Garner.
People have been quoted as saying that David was up two hours before anyone else and he would leave his caravan to contemplate the desert. Barbara said this was absolute myth for he was a bit slow in the mornings. "He used to arrive an hour after everyone else. He'd generally given the camera crew the setup the night before, so he gave them time to get ready.
"David didn't believe he should mix much with actors socially while he was filming, because he thought he couldn't go out next morning and give them instructions. When I'd say, 'Why don't we have a few people in for drinks at the weekend?' he'd say, 'No, no. Not while I'm working.' I like having little parties, I do it all the time, but I couldn't persuade him. He was very tolerant about things that didn't directly affect his work. But if it did affect his work, then he was intolerant."
One thing was guaranteed to make David furious: if anyone walked across the freshly swept sand just before the camera turned.
"On one occasion, we arrived on location and David saw a lorry driving across the sand dune. He got out of the jeep and ran after it, screaming and shouting. But he was not angry often, because everyone worked jolly hard and did their best not to make him angry."
Barbara recalled that David sometimes did not know how to stage a scene and would get furious with himself and start yelling at the crew.
"David always knew that a scene could be shot," said Ernie Day. "His problem was finding the most perfect way of shooting it. I'd come on the set and think it all looked wonderful. And then we didn't shoot for another eight hours because they were getting it even better."
David's work was all-absorbing, which gave him an odd sense of time.
"If we were doing a tracking shot," said Barbara, "David would spend a long time peering through the viewfinder. I'd have to go up to him and say, 'Hey, David, you've been doing this for forty-five minutes.' He'd say, 'Oh, my God. Have I? Thanks for telling me.'
"David used to make me laugh a lot. He wasn't a great wit exactly. He had a sarcastic sense of humour, but kindly sarcastic, not this awful digging wit. He'd be very funny about the things that happened during the day, things that hadn't worked."
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