The Guns Of Navarone would be the studio’s biggest-ever film.įoreman pursued the current superstars – Cary Grant wanted first refusal, William Holden was keen – and aimed for a stunning casting coup.

Foreman’s ambitions to become a producer were blocked by the US government’s decision to revoke his passport, but Columbia offered him a deal as long as he remained out of America. Under fierce political pressure, Foreman fled to Britain.

Foreman had written Kirk Douglas’s breakthrough picture Champion (1949) and High Noon (1952) starring Gary Cooper. The studio assigned the movie to American Carl Foreman, a fugitive from the McCarthy communist witch hunt of the early 1950s. His follow-up, The Guns Of Navarone (1957), equally successful, was snapped up by Columbia Pictures, which had just enjoyed its biggest ever success with The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957). Maclean, a Scottish schoolteacher, had shot to international fame with HMS Ulysses (1955), sold 250,000 copies in hardback. Worse, Gregory Peck, whose name was meant to guarantee success, became a box office liability and, strangest of all, American producer Carl Foreman was hell bent on giving opera superstar Maria Callas her movie debut. The movie narrowly avoided filming in the middle of a civil war, caused a court martial, the director had to be replaced and star David Niven nearly died. There were more twists and turns in the making of the film of The Guns Of Navarone (1961) than the fertile mind of best-selling author Alistair Maclean could ever have dreamed up.

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