Lawrence of Arabia - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Lawrence of Arabia or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Lawrence of Arabia

[cassandra]

Anthony Perkins was considered for the lead role, but when he scored a hit with Psycho (1960), Producer Sam Spiegel and Director Sir David Lean dropped the idea for fear their film would be labelled "Psycho of Arabia".

[michele]

When the company moved from Jordan to Spain, the camels travelled on shipboard with their legs drawn up under them so they wouldn't get seasick. After they got to Spain, they needed a day to recuperate from the ordeal before they could travel to the shooting locations.

[ivan]

The train wreck sequence was filmed in Spain.

[janice]

In July 1961, the company moved to their first location, Jebel Tubeiq near the Saudi Arabian border. The spot was one hundred fifty miles (two hundred forty-two kilometers) away from the nearest water, and had not been inhabited since a band of monks abandoned their monastery there in the seventh century A.D. Temperatures were so high in the summer sun that most thermometers couldn't even register them. In fact, the thermometers had to be cooled down.

[dustin]

Jack Hawkins was originally set to take on the part of Colonel Harry Brighton. When he was shifted over to play Allenby, Sir Anthony Quayle got the part of Brighton.

[kenzi]

T.E. Lawrence was riding from the Bovington Army Camp to his cottage in Cloud Hill when his fatal accident occurred. The scene where he was tortured and assaulted by the Turks was from the book "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", published in shortened form as "Revolt in the Desert". T.E. Lawrence refused to publish "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", his life's work, but did print it exclusively for one hundred twenty people only. The one hundred twenty people who read the book were delighted with it, and it was published after T.E. Lawrence died.

[frances]

Sir David Lean personally supervised the first cuts that brought the movie down to three hours, as he wanted it to enjoy more showings per day. During the 1989 restoration, he passed blame for the cuts onto the then deceased Sam Spiegel.

[riley]

The famous cut from T.E. Lawrence blowing out a match to the desert sunrise was originally just going to be a dissolve. But Editor Anne V. Coates suggested to Sir David Lean that he use the cut in the fashion of the then current French New Wave.

[wesley]

Competing with this movie was a stage play by Terence Rattigan called "Ross", named for one of the aliases T.E. Lawrence had used in his later years to escape notice. The play had a successful London run, and was set for a movie adaptation, with Laurence Harvey starring, but a threatened indictment from Producer Sam Spiegel made it impossible for Producer Herbert Wilcox to obtain financing, so the production was dropped at a loss of one hundred thousand pounds sterling. In this case, turnabout was fair play. Wilcox had turned Lawrence down in 1926, when the hero was trying to sell the screen rights to his "Seven Pillars of Wisdom".

[kim]

The character of Tafas (the Arab guide shot by Omar Sharif for drinking water from the wrong well) was played by Zia Mohyeddin, who is a Pakistani actor, producer, director, and television broadcaster. He is considered to be a legend, and is of great influence in literary circles.

[jim]

On his first location scouting trip in Jordan, director Sir David Lean discovered the remains of the Turkish locomotives and railroad tracks Lawrence had destroyed during the Arab Revolution. After forty years in the sun, they hadn't even rusted.

[nicholas]

One of the major scenes shot in southern Spain was the attack on the Turkish railroad. The crew laid tracks and brought in German and Belgian locomotives from the early twentieth century rented from the Spanish national railway system. Each of the two trains included eight passenger cars, fourteen horse cars, two luggage vans, and a guards' van.

[lena]

Two miles of track were laid for the train scenes.

[lonnie]

Sir Alec Guinness said in interviews that he developed his Arab accent from a conversation he had with Omar Sharif.

[christina]

Sir Laurence Olivier was offered the roles of Prince Feisal, General Mellenby, and Auda Abu Tayi. He declined them all, as he was engaged at the Chichester Festival Theatre.

[russell]

After the tremendous success of The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Producer Sam Spiegel and Director Sir David Lean were keen to work together on a similarly worthy topic. Initially the pair considered making a movie of the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, but soon gave up on that.

[maureen]

Peter O'Toole spent three months learning how to live as an Arab before a frame of film was shot. He travelled across the desert with the Bedouin camel patrol, and often slept rough under the stars amidst utter silence, just as T.E. Lawrence had done as a child.

[eli]

This movie missed out on an eleventh Oscar nomination, for Best Costume Design, because someone forgot to submit Phyllis Dalton's name for consideration.

[stephanie]

This movie premiered in London as the Royal Command Performance for 1962 on Monday, December 10. Tickets for the charity performance cost between one and twenty-five guineas (the equivalent of four dollars to one hundred dollars).