148 GUNS OF NAVARONE, THE
signed Greek opera star Maria Callas and Roger Vadim’s then- wife, Danish actress
Annette Stroyberg, to these roles but both soon dropped out and were replaced by
Gia Scala and Irene Papas. At 24, 26, and 34, respectively, Darren, Scala, and Papas
were the only major cast members plausibly young enough to have been low-
ranking combatants in WWII. Most of the other principal characters were in their
mid- to- late 40s (Niven was 50)— really too old to be members of a crack com-
mando unit. Indeed, the British press cheekily dubbed The Guns of Navarone
“El derly Gang Goes Off to War.” Foreman signed Alexander Mackendrick (The
Ladykillers) to direct but fired him after a quarrel “over creative differences” and
replaced him with J. Lee Thompson in June 1960.Production
Carl Foreman wanted to shoot the picture’s outdoor scenes on location in Cyprus,
but rumors of an impending civil war prompted him to opt for the Greek Isle of
Rhodes. Initially bud geted at $2 million, the production ended up costing triple
that amount due to logistical challenges: remote locations, simulated battles on land
and sea, elaborate studio sets (including a mock German fortress that covered an
acre and a half and stood 140 feet high), a faux shipwreck during a violent storm,
complicated combat pyrotechnics with real explosives, and the need to hire a dozen
U.S.- built destroyers from the Greek navy and 1,000 Greek soldiers to imperson-
ate a German Wehrmacht regiment. The production lasted seven and a half months
(March– October 1960), during which cinematographer Oswald Morris shot
67 hours of raw color footage for a film with a final cut of 2.6 hours duration— a
38- to-1 shooting ratio that was about four times the industry average in that era. The
shoot on Rhodes lasted three months and was a rugged experience for all involved,
but the remainder of the shoot at Shepperton Studios outside London proved to be
unexpectedly grueling as well. To stage the storm- induced wreck of the comman-
do’s fishing boat under properly controlled conditions required the use of an enor-
mous water tank (120 ft. × 100 ft. that held 250,000 gallons) inside Eu rope’s largest
sound stage at Shepperton. An adjacent supply tank held another 75,000 gallons.
Over 4,200 gallons (16 tons) of water hurtled down four giant chutes onto the actors
and the set while giant fans blew spray around every time Foreman yelled “Action!”
( Meade, 1961, pp. E1, E5). On 26 June Peck and Quinn were injured when they
were swept across the set too forcefully by one of Foreman’s artificial waves. On
8 September the German fortress set that took five months to build at a cost of
$280,000 partially collapsed and had to be rebuilt, causing further delays. While
shooting a climactic scene in the German fortress, David Niven contracted a near-
fatal case of septicemia through a cut lip while standing for hours in a flooded
elevator shaft. He spent weeks in the hospital but recovered enough to shoot his
remaining scenes.Plot Summary
In 1943, the Axis powers coordinate an attack on Leros, an island where 2,000
British soldiers are stranded, to convince Turkey to join the fight. The Royal Navy
is unable to retrieve the soldiers due to the radar- directed cannons situated in