50 BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, THE
American screenwriter self- exiled in London, optioned the film rights. American
producer Sam Spiegel (On the Waterfront) was also captivated by Boulle’s book. He
met with Foreman, bought the screen rights for $7,000, and hired him to write an
adaptation for $10,000. Columbia Pictures agreed to finance a film version, and
Spiegel insisted that an American character be added to the script to enhance the
film’s domestic appeal. Spiegel then considered vari ous directors: Fred Zinnemann,
Howard Hawks, William Wyler, John Ford, Carol Reed, and Orson Welles. All
either turned down the assignment or were rejected by Spiegel. Katherine Hep-
burn recommended David Lean (In Which We Serve), a British “art house” director
who had yet to make a Hollywood wide- screen epic. Spiegel hired him in Febru-
ary 1956. Lean read Foreman’s script and disliked it intensely, feeling it strayed
too far from the spirit of Boulle’s novel. Inevitably, friction developed between
Foreman and Lean as they tried to work out a new version of the script in the
ensuing months. In the meantime Spiegel, Lean, and Jack Hildyard, Lean’s cinema-
tographer, scouted the actual bridge location in Siam (as Thailand was then called)
but rejected it as too remote for a large- scale movie production. The bridge site they
eventually chose was located on the Masleliya Oya, a tributary of the Kelani Ganga
River near Kitulga, Ceylon (present- day Sri Lanka). An abandoned stone quarryCo- stars (from left) Alec Guinness, William Holden, and Jack Hawkins pose in front of
the fabled bridge during the filming of David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).
(Columbia Pictures/Photofest)