210 LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
Albert Finney to play Lawrence after arranging a four- day screen test in Octo-
ber 1960 that cost £100,000. Unwilling to sign a mandatory long- term contract,
Finney quit and was replaced by Peter O’Toole, a virtual unknown who strongly
resembled Lawrence (Brownlow, 1996, p. 77). Spiegel’s first choice to play Law-
rence’s closest friend, Sherif Ali, was the French actor Alain Delon, but Delon could
not tolerate brown contact lenses, so the part ultimately went to Egyptian actor
Omar Sharif.Production
With the completion of most of the casting and extensive location scouting and
preparation, shooting began at Jebel Tubeiq near the border of Jordan and Saudi
Arabia on 25 June 1961, a desolate spot in the Jordanian desert 150 miles from
the nearest oasis that required trucking in thousands of gallons of water per day
at 8¢ per gallon. The shoot was scheduled to last 6 months but ended up taking
14 months. Lean’s original intention was to shoot the entire film in Jordan, but
remote desert locations, windblown sand, flies, and extreme heat (up to 130°)
caused lots of cast and crew illnesses, and costs soared. After five months in Jor-
dan, Columbia Pictures pressured Sam Spiegel to stem the financial hemorrhag-
ing by moving the production to Spain. The first three months ( January– March 1962)
in Spain were spent shooting city scenes and interiors in the distinctly Moorish
city of Seville. The Mudéjar pavilion of the Parque de María Luisa in Seville sub-
stituted for Jerusalem. The Plaza de España stood in for Britain’s Egyptian Expe-
ditionary Force Headquarters in Cairo. The Cairo officers’ club scene, where
Lawrence’s young companion is refused a drink after crossing the Nefud Desert,
was filmed at Palaçio Español, an arcaded building also in the Plaza de España.
Vari ous other shots of Seville’s Casa de Pilatos and Alcázar were used to represent
Cairo and Jerusalem. The climactic Arab council chamber scene in the town hall
of Damascus was filmed at El Casino, Avenida de María Luisa. In April 1962, after
three months shooting in Seville, the com pany moved 250 miles southeast to the
port city of Almería, Andalusia, a region featuring desert terrain, and, on the coast
at Cabo de Gata (Cape of the Cat), the highest and most extensive sand dunes in
Eu rope that closely resemble the Arabian deserts. The entire com pany traveled to
Seville by train, along with their lodging trailers, and a 48- truck convoy transported
the other set pieces, costumes, and equipment. Lean had planned to film at the real
Aqaba and the archaeological site at Petra, both in Jordan, but once the production
moved to Spain he had Aqaba painstakingly re- created by hiring hundreds of locals
from the resort town of Carbonaras to construct more than 300 period building
fronts and a quarter- mile- long sea wall at a dried river bed on the Mediterranean
Sea known as the Playa del Algarrobico. Lawrence’s execution of Gasim, the attacks
on Turkish trains, and Deraa exteriors were filmed at Genovese Beach, San Jose, on
Cabo de Gata. In July 1962, after three months in Almería and environs, the com-
pany moved on to Ouarzazate, Morocco, to film the Tafas massacre, with Moroccan
army troops substituting for the Turkish army. Location shooting wrapped on
17 August 1962, and the opening two scenes, shot on location in Dorset and at