SAHARA 263
to Humphrey Bogart after he and Donlevy traded movies. With the full coopera-
tion of the War Department, shooting took place from early March to mid- May 1943,
in 90° heat, in Anza- Borrego Desert State Park, a 600,000- acre preserve in the
Mojave Desert just west of California’s Salton Sea that was from the days of Rudolph
Valentino, Hollywood’s go-to locale for shooting desert pictures. Art Director Lio-
nel Banks had 2,000 tons of sand trucked in, spray painted, and blown around by
giant fans to make the terrain look more like the towering sand dunes of the Sahara
Desert in Libya. The U.S. military supplied a 28- ton M3 “Grant” medium tank, a
P-51 Mustang fighter (repainted to pass for a Messerschmitt 109 used in a strafing
scene), vari ous other tanks, half- tracks, weapons, equipment, and the 250 men of
“C” Com pany, 84th Recon Battalion, 4th Armored Division, to play German sol-
diers in the film. During principal photography, cast and crew resided at the (now
defunct) Planter’s Hotel in Brawley, California, about 50 miles east of the shooting
location, while the soldiers lived in tents at Anza- Borrego. Bogart’s working rela-
tionship with Zoltán Korda was strained but not as much as his relationship with
his then- wife, Mayo Methot, whom he sardonically nicknamed “Sluggy” (they were
known in Hollywood as “the battling Bogarts”). Marital trou bles notwithstanding,
Bogart delivered one of his strongest per for mances, despite the fact that, at age 43,
he was at least 17 years older than the average G.I. in World War II. He considered
Sahara one of his best films.
Plot Summary
Separated from its unit during the latter stages of the Battle of Al Gazala, a U.S.
Army M3 tank (dubbed “Lulubelle”) commanded by Master Sergeant Joe Gunn
(Humphrey Bogart) is trying to rejoin the retreating British Eighth Army. Arriving
at a bombed- out field hospital, Gunn and his remaining crew, Jimmy Doyle (Dan
Duryea) and Waco Hoyt (Bruce Bennett), pick up a motley group of stragglers,
among them British Captain Jason Halliday (Richard Nugent), four Commonwealth
soldiers, and Free French Corporal Jean “Frenchie” Leroux (Louis Mercier). Though
he outranks Gunn, Halliday cedes command to him. Later, they come upon Suda-
nese Sergeant Major Tambul (Rex Ingram) and his Italian prisoner of war, Giuseppe
( J. Carrol Naish). Initially, Gunn opts to leave Giuseppe behind— a sure death
sentence— but humanitarian instincts prevail and the Italian is also taken aboard
the tank. Tambul offers to take the group to a well at Hassan Barani. On the way,
Luftwaffe pi lot Captain von Schletow (Kurt Kreuger) fires at the tank and kills a
British soldier, but is subsequently shot out of the air and captured. The men reach
the well to find it bone dry. Low on water, Gunn and his ragtag outfit are forced to
seek water at another desert well at Bir Acroma, 50 miles away. Capably led by
Tambul through a blinding sandstorm, they find the well but it is almost dry. When
German troops arrive soon afterwards, Gunn and his men attack the vehicle. A
German survivor reveals that the Afrika Korps battalion is nearby, struggling to
find water. Gunn convinces his fellow soldiers to fight the Germans as a distrac-
tion while Waco Hoyt searches for backup. The two German survivors are released
to their battalion with an offer of water in exchange for food, despite the fact that
Gunn barely has water for his own soldiers. When the German battalion shows