News of yet another industry death reaches us, that of film producer Euan Lloyd. We reprint Tony Earnshaw’s exclusive ‘The Wild Geese’ interview from Impact with permission…
Euan Lloyd began his directing career working on travelogue documentaries in the 1950s and graduated to be an associate producer and producer on films such as The Secret Ways, The Poppy Is Also a Flower, Murderer’s Row, Shalako and Catlow. His first independent project Paper Tiger (1975), was not a commercial success, but undaunted he put all his energy and finance into everything The Wild Geese (1978) which had a budget of over $10 million. He also proved to be the impetus behind another ensemble action-outing, The Sea Wolves, in 1980 again with Roger Moore, alongside David Niven and Gregory Peck and Who Dares Wins (1982) which starred Lewis Collins, Judy Davus, Edward Woodward and Richard Widmark. His final film was Wild Geese II (released in 1985) which may not have emulated the success of the original but starred the likes of Scott Glenn and Laurence Olivier.
He was also the subject of The Last of the Gentleman Producers a documentary short by Simon Sprackling, which was also included on the 2004 DVD release of The Wild Geese.
Tony Earnshaw writes...
I first met Euan Lloyd in London in 2002. I was researching his timeless war movie The Wild Geese and had arranged an interview at his home.
We must have talked for five hours. Our conversation ranged over his entire career but the meat of it focused on the gestation, production and legacy of The Wild Geese. Euan was the kindest of men, and someone who was extremely precise in his detail. What’s more, he had a memory like a steel trap. He could recall conversations from decades before with pinpoint accuracy.
I knew I had amassed enough material to write a book – but who would read it? I wrote to Euan and said as much. His response was typical: if the time came for me to write it, I had his permission to do so, and to use whatever stills I wanted. What a gift.
Over the last few years we kept in touch via email. Our most recent communication was about Stanley Baker – Euan had worked with him on Carl Foreman’s production of The Guns of Navarone. As always, Euan was helpful and inspiring.
Now he’s gone, and on the same terrible weekend that has claimed Robin (The Wicker Man) Hardy, Michael (The Deer Hunter) Cimino and TV comedian Caroline Aherne.
I will miss him. But I relish the times we spent together and the stories he told me. What a treasure trove I possess. I know I’m lucky to have it. Thanks, Euan…
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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 wishing 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!’”
Tony Earnshaw and Euan Lloyd (Photo: Jim Moran)
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 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 – spoiler alert –…………………….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.”
