Making Ryan's Daughter

The Myths, Madness and Mastery

Paul Benedict Rowan

• Publisher: New Island
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781848407657
• eBook ISBN: 9781848407664
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Film & Video
• Index: History

The making of Ryan's Daughter in Dingle 1969 is shrouded in myth and sensational stories. Hollywood superstars in late-1960s Ireland, the Irish climate, the studio system and one of film's greatest auteurs all combined into a troubled and fabled production. Fifty years on, Sunday Times journalist Paul Benedict Rowan reveals in fascinating detail why David Lean's behemoth holds such a unique place in movie history, bringing together exclusive interviews with cast and crew, as well as many stills photographs taken on- and off-set. Rowan pieces all into a definitive rollercoaster account of the making of one of Lean's last films.

1. Roughneck in a Rolls

Eddie Fowlie loved breaking rules, so what better time to make a move than during siesta? He had already emptied much of the contents of his caravan into his large automobile, noisily at times. Otherwise, Carboneras was silent in the early-afternoon sun, save for the lapping of the Mediterranean Sea against the shore. Fowlie ignited the straight-six engine of his Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud 1. He steered it through the whitewashed village and headed out on the road at the beginning of a journey that would take him from the southeastern tip of Spain to the most western point of Ireland and another sleepy place: the town of Dingle.

Fowlie had worked out that the journey would amount to nearly a week of hard driving over some two thousand miles, but he was relishing the prospect. Carboneras and the caravan were all very well, but he yearned for the excitement, the adventure, the challenge that came with making big motion pictures, and especially big motion pictures with David Lean.

Fowlie was Lean’s dogsbody or right-hand man, depending on who you spoke to, and was the most dedicated of the director’s Maniacs. Lean didn’t have many friends and Fowlie was probably the closest one. He was also considered to be Lean’s alter ego, with a degree of influence over the director that some others in Lean’s tight circle resented. Lean first met Fowlie in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), on the set of The Bridge on the River Kwai. Lean was swimming in the river under the bridge when Fowlie dived in, re-emerged and exclaimed, ‘Bloody millionaire stuff’, an outlook that hugely impressed Lean at a time when most of the crew and actors were complaining about the hazards of working in Ceylon’s steaming jungle. Fowlie was Lean’s property master, special effects man and location finder, and those were just his formal roles. He was known to knock down telegraph poles when they were in the camera’s line of sight by driving into them with his Land Rover. He would locate and strangle cockerels when their crowing was disrupting filming. He was regarded as animalistic yet had an artistic side that belied his brutish manner. He was Lean’s go-to man and problem-solver, albeit one who could create new ones just as quickly.

He sometimes wondered whether he had been spoiled by David, and certainly he copied him. He shot stills using a Leica, the make of camera favoured by his employer. Fowlie had estranged himself from his children of former relationships, like David, and joined the Lean tribe that went from film to film.

As he steered the Silver Cloud past the whitewashed cottages and then entered the desert landscape of Almería, his mind drifted to what had brought him to this place – Lawrence of Arabia, curiously enough, and in particular the staging of the sacking of the city of Aqaba by Arab forces led by Lawrence. Lean’s crew had built a magnificent replica of Aqaba just outside Carboneras and afterwards Lean, his assistant John Box and Eddie himself had bought land in the area, or practically been given it by a local businessman. Box and Eddie were two of Lean’s most Dedicated Maniacs, like family even. Here, they were all going to settle in the sun, away from Britain, away from the bloody trade unions and the taxman, who the socialists at Number 10 had unleashed to bleed dry those prepared to make themselves a few quid. In the Spain ruled by General Francisco Franco, they got to keep what was rightfully theirs. They liked Spain, and all it stood for, so much so that Lean came back to film Doctor Zhivago near Madrid, even though it was the story of a Russian poet who never left his own country.

As the road to the town of Venta del Pobre straightened out, Fowlie checked his speed dial. A steady 80mph. It was good to get the Rolls on a long journey at last. He had been poking about in it since David had given it to him after Zhivago. A rare smile spread across Eddie’s face. David had been in a particularly expansive mood back then. One or two vital members of the crew had received cheques of $50,000 as a personal thank you from the director. Lean had also treated himself to a Rolls-Royce upgrade, from the Silver Cloud to a burgundy-coloured convertible Silver Shadow. Doctor Zhivago was making even more money than Lawrence, and there was no Sam Spiegel about to divert the proceeds either. Eddie wanted Lean’s Silver Cloud and had written him a cheque, which David had returned with a message scrawled across it: I always thought you’d look good in a Rolls-Royce. And Eddie did look good. Bloody good. He felt good, too. England, where he had to stop over on his way to Ireland, was an attractive prospect when you only had to spend a few days there. Things had been getting a bit too hot and heavy back at base. He’d been putting away too much booze of late and the rows with his young wife Conchita were getting worse.

Eddie thought also of Barbara Cole, the continuity girl David had met in the Jordanian desert on Lawrence and invited to share his mobile home. Barbara had put body and soul into building a magnificent house on Lean’s land in Carboneras and was awaiting Lean’s arrival, when he had scooted off with another woman. She was tough, Barbara, but Eddie couldn’t help thinking of Miss Havisham every time he looked up at the house. He had mentioned David’s name once to her in the street and she had started weeping. Yes, he could do without Carboneras for a while. It being a David Lean film, he knew it would be a long while.

Eddie’s first inkling that something was moving came when a cable arrived from Rome and was delivered to the caravan. He knew David was there and he had opened the telegram the way he had ripped open his Christmas presents as a young boy. ‘Don’t take a job,’ Lean had written. ‘Robert and I are writing a little gem. Phone.’ From the telephone box in Carboneras he had done so immediately and been summoned to Rome. There, he found David and the Robert in question, Robert Bolt, in the largest suite of the Parco dei Principi Grand Hotel behind a fog of cigarette smoke, poring over papers, with empty coffee cups and overflowing ashtrays surrounding them.

David had emerged to take him and Robert to dinner, and over Parma ham and Lobster Thermidor Lean put a proposition to him. While Robert – a Red – bolted down his food and gave out about what the Yanks were doing in Vietnam, Lean told Eddie that he wanted him not just to be property master but to find locations for his next movie. This would be a love story set in Ireland. ‘Michael’s Day’ was the working title. The following day Lean briefed him further back at the hotel and he was introduced to the producer, an old friend of David’s called Anthony Havelock-Allan, an aristocratic type of whom Eddie was immediately suspicious. Havelock-Allan handed Eddie an envelope full of Italian lire, telling him to pick up his next payment in London.

Fowlie had been told that filming would take place in Ireland, but past experience told him that Lean movies had a habit of spilling out into other countries, and Spain itself, with its variety of landscapes and abundance of technical talent and cheap labour, was one of Lean’s favourite locations. It would be just like David for the whole bloody thing to end up back here. After two days driving west through Andalucía and then north along the border with Portugal, Fowlie scouted north-western Spain, thundering along the Bay of Biscay from San Sebastián to Gijón. From what he had read of the script and from what Lean had told him, he knew that the film had a dark, moody side, and what he saw was too green and too blue. He drove on, through France, and took the ferry to Dover.

Exactly a week after he had pulled out of Carboneras, he settled into the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington. All the while he enjoyed the stares he was getting, particularly when he had reason to speak to someone. He knew he looked and sounded like a rough-neck in a Rolls; the huge build, the large sensuous mouth, the shock of white hair. Eddie was back where it had all started, but he remained nostalgia-free. He wasn’t keen on returning to his home town of Teddington, nearby on the banks of the Thames; his priorities lay elsewhere.

Fowlie visited Bartholomew’s map shop in Charing Cross. There he bought ordnance survey maps of Ireland and took them back to the hotel, where he spread them out on his king-size bed. He had been all over the world making movies but, like so many Brits, he had never hopped across the Irish Sea to Ireland before. His brief was not so much Ireland but more the West of Ireland, facing out to the Atlantic Ocean. As he studied the maps, his eye was quickly drawn to the Dingle Peninsula. For a start, it reached far out into the Atlantic. Then there were the three little islands further offshore; the Blaskets, they were called. Just the sort of background David wanted when he was shooting. The map’s contours told him there were mountains in the area, not very big ones, but of promising shapes and sizes. The Dingle Peninsula, he decided, would be his first port of call.

On the way out of London, he collected spending money from MGM Studios at Borehamwood. Though he was itching to get to Ireland, on the way to the car ferry he scouted the coast of Wales as another alternative location. Fowlie then got the ferry to Dublin and headed west straight away. He and the Rolls crawled through village after village after town – motorways hadn’t arrived in Ireland – and the countryside in-between all looked too green and too pretty. By the time he reached the Dingle Peninsula, 200 miles on, night had fallen and he was feeling tired, but his spirits curiously began to rise as he looked about him. Driving along in the Silver Cloud, he could see the dark shapes of mountains to the right and a great flat expanse of what must be the ocean to the left, with a few lights twinkling in the distance. In the blackness he couldn’t see the water, but when he wound down his window he could smell the sea breeze and taste the salt on his tongue.

He was on the very edge of Europe, the most western point. If he’d been able to keep on driving, his next stop would have been New York. As it was, he reached Dingle close to midnight. It was late summer, but Dingle was deserted and damp, with just the odd parked car out on the street. What type of people lived here? He went into a pub called Ashe’s and ordered a whisky. The owner, Tom Ashe, had time to fill him in on some local history as the place was quiet. This was a small market town and a fishing port, but the harbour had become badly silted up so big boats now stayed away. From Dingle’s most thriving period in the sixteenth century, when it had been an important trading post, the town had gone into steady decline and had a dwindling population that relied to a large degree on handouts from the state and those who had emigrated to the United States but hadn’t forgotten their loved ones back home. Touching.

Fowlie retired to his hotel on the outskirts of the town. The Skellig Hotel was still not fully completed but had opened, was of a reasonable standard, a good size and would provide an adequate place to stay. He took that as a good omen. Although David had spent nearly a year living in a caravan in the desert in Jordan for Lawrence, Fowlie knew that the director valued his creature comforts more as an older man. That night Eddie Fowlie became one of the Skellig’s first guests. The girl behind the counter was charming and helpful, with the most delightful lilting accent. He could have stayed there all night listening to her, but instead delayed just long enough to get a name and location for the local estate agent, who could act as his guide. She recommended the local stout and after a couple of delicious, creamy pints in the hotel bar, he retired for the night.

Fowlie slept with the curtains open and daylight revealed a place sent from the heavens. The morning was bright and sunny and from the hotel window he could see what he could only guess at the night before: the dramatic, dark mountains that ran down to a vast expanse of ocean. In the blue sky hung great towering fortresses of white, fluffy clouds. Walking out of the hotel, it also dawned on him that the landscape was more brown than green, or purple where the heather covered the mountains. His senses tingled. As he continued to gaze, he noticed that the combination of water, mountains, clouds and sun was generating the most wonderful quality of light. This place was full of drama, full of atmosphere. David would love that.

At John Moore’s estate agents, he found Joe Mahoney happy to shut up shop and swap the comfort of the office for the front passenger seat of the Rolls. What Eddie saw on their journey increased his excitement. Ten miles out the road to the west he came to the wonderfully rugged Slea Head and clapped eyes on the first of the Blasket Islands, a mile or so out to sea. He was excited, not only by the sight of them but by the realisation that he had been right in his assumptions when he’d looked at the map back in London. The islands would offer depth of field and a stunning background when David needed one. Eddie could already picture David filming the blurred images of the islands held in puddles on the road. At Coumeenoole Cove there was another boon, a narrow road steeply descending to a small beach carved out of the black cliffs and battered by great Atlantic rollers. The film called for an arms landing by Irish rebels. This would be perfect, he thought. And, as a clutch of other beach scenes were called for, Mahoney directed him to Inch Strand, about thirty miles back along the peninsula, a vast promenade of golden sand and dunes stretching for miles out into Dingle Bay. At another, Banna Strand, Fowlie was in typically irascible form, ignoring ‘Private Property’ signs and Mahoney’s protestations as he found something else called for in the script that only God could create: a cliff overlooking the beach. Mahoney directed him to a plinth nearby dedicated to one Roger Casement. Turns out it was the same beach where Irish rebels had attempted to stage a landing of German arms in 1916 and in doing so had delivered Casement into the arms of the British army and the hangman.

This area had everything, he concluded, and all locations were within an hour’s drive of each other. Anything not provided by God, Fowlie knew he and his team could build. Still, he had the rest of Ireland’s west coast to scout in case there was something even better. It had been a fruitful couple of days. The one drawback was the unpredictability of the weather and the large amount of cow dung getting thrown up into the undercarriage of the Rolls. His car was plated underneath, but still. Fowlie hired a Mercedes and found a hayshed in which to stash the Rolls. Then he travelled up and down the length of Ireland’s west coast, from Cork to Donegal, not once but two or three times, almost running the rented Merc into the ground before dropping it back at Sean Moran’s garage in Dingle.

2. Passage to India

All this time, Lean had been working away on the script with Robert Bolt at the Parco Dei Principe in Rome. Also at his side was 21-year-old Sandy Hotz, who was providing not only moral support but also the creative spark for what would become Ryan’s Daughter. Lean, at the age of 60, was three times older than Sandy, and his crew were understandably curious about how the liaison had come about. Was it her looks, for she was certainly striking? Jocelyn Rickards, the costume designer on Ryan’s Daughter, who visited Lean at his hotel, spotted a pair of low-heeled black patent-leather shoes in the suite, which she reckoned must belong to his new girlfriend, and was rather struck by the young woman herself when she came into view: ‘Tall and supple, Sandy was a little like a pre-Renaissance Madonna, with pale honey-coloured hair, a high forehead and long, delicately rounded limbs. She seemed half-girl, half-woman, was utterly in love with David and fresh from her convent education, waiting for everything that he could teach her about life, filmmaking, growing up, living and loving.’

Rickards had heard all about Lean’s reputation when it came to women. When Lean met Sandy, not only was he still married to an Indian woman, Leila Matkar, but his steady lover Barbara Cole was already earmarked as the fifth Mrs David Lean. It was a Gordian knot that would take some time to cut.

Lean had met Leila on a voyage of discovery to India and then married her in Paris in July 1960. He was at the sharp end of a few difficult relationships back in London at the time, and he liked the eastern way in which Leila sat at his feet and lit his cigarettes. Leila became his fourth wife but was made what Lean called a ‘celluloid widow’ by Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, only appearing in her husband’s company intermittently. Living out in the middle of the desert in Jordan in a caravan, with the rest of the crew under canvas, David had embarked on an affair with Cole, who had succumbed to his ardour even though she realised that if it cooled, she could lose her job as continuity girl on the film. For Lean, it was pretty much all business. When taking on a new movie project, he found himself energised by starting a new romance. He was of the opinion that finding the right new woman could make the movie better by at least 50 per cent, though it is not quite clear how he arrived at that figure.

Lean was a handsome and virile man. Apart from directing one of the most ambitious and difficult movies in the history of the industry, he would spend his nights making love passionately to Barbara in his caravan out in the desert when his wife was elsewhere, which was most of the time. Leila suffered bouts of depression, which were a hindrance to David when he had a movie to make, as she would be slumped in a chair on her rare visits to the set while he bustled around the place. Barbara, who was in her early forties, was a highly practical New Zealander and knew her role, on and off the set, accepting that filmmaking would always be the love of Lean’s life, and that she could assist him not only in a job she loved but also filling in the gaps around it. The passion was still there when Lawrence passed and Doctor Zhivago came along. Leila was still around too, but Barbara was patient.

After making Zhivago, Lean went back to India to be with Leila, but her depression had worsened and David couldn’t bear to be near ill people, his wife included. Instead, he threw himself into researching a project he had nurtured for more than ten years: the filming of the life of Mahatma Gandhi. He planned to make this with Bolt, seeing it as the natural progression of their work after Lawrence and Zhivago. Then a letter arrived from Bolt in August 1966 that took Lean by surprise.

His brilliant cohort was having his own domestic difficulties. It was more than a year since they had last met, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Roughneck in a Rolls
• 2. Passage to India
• 3. A bit of a fillum
• 4. Not waving, drowning
• 5. Five seasons in one day
• 6. Mrs Bolt
• 7. The Jones Gang
• 8. Dingle ’69
• 9. The bluebell wood conspiracy
• 10. Dangerous occupation
• 11. World’s first hippie
• 12. Bloody murder
• 13. The Smiling Cobra
• 14. Black and white
• 15. The storm waiters
• 16. Rid of the mob
• 17. Body in the bathroom
• 18. God save our Lean
• Acknowledgements
• Credits
• Notes on Sources
• Index