‘Lawrence’ Stars Recall Epic Adventure

More than a quarter century has elapsed since they acted in “Lawrence of Arabia,” and their involvement in the epic saga ranged from nearly two years to a mere three days.

Nevertheless, Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn and Jose Ferrer retain vivid personal memories of that experience, even as they share a collective admiration that nears reverence for the film’s director, Sir David Lean.

Peter O’Toole was cast as T. E. Lawrence when he was 28 years old. He did not complete the role until he was 30.

“Truly, there were times late in filming in Spain when I thought the production would never end,” O’Toole said during a phone conversation from London.

But in the beginning, on the Jordanian desert, O’Toole was a young actor being handed the opportunity of a lifetime--and eager to absorb a new culture.

“There was the thrill of being on this remote desert where God was born,” he said. “The Hebrew God, Islamic God and Christian God were all born in this same, superbly desolate place. Being there, one could understand why. The desert was furious, savage, beautiful.”

It was also exhausting, the locale for the film’s most taxing scenes. O’Toole singled out the sequence in which Lawrence struggles to save a Bedouin youth from quicksand as his single most draining experience.

How long did the sequence take?

“A long time,” he answered, and even as he spoke, his voice wearied. “A long, long, long time. We filmed it in real desert sandstorms when possible, and we created sandstorms with aircraft propellers when necessary. If I hadn’t been holding that boy, he would have sunk.”

Through the seemingly endless months of filming, he was buoyed by his bond with Lean, though often there were times when O’Toole was unsure of what was going on behind his taciturn director’s incandescent eyes.

“I sometimes would begin to talk to David and feel as if I were talking to a statue,” O’Toole said. “Other days, he would walk up to me and say, ‘Pete, do you really think . . .,’ and then he would walk away. And I never would learn what was on his mind.

“He lived completely in his own world, inside his head. Eventually we developed a system where, if he was staring off into nowhere, I would ask, ‘Vacant or pensive?’ He would always reply, ‘Vacant.’

“But we didn’t need to talk very much. We communicated by a kind of semaphore: higher, lower, louder, softer.”

For O’Toole, who at the time had appeared in only three movies, “Lawrence” provided a thorough course in film making. “I learned from David every day,” he said. “Our relationship is still very much master-pupil.”

In addition to Lean, the fledgling screen actor was exposed to a cast of international stars. “Making the film was like a bull fight,” O’Toole said. “I felt like a toreador. I was in the ring, and every few minutes they opened the trap and out popped another bull: Jack Hawkins, Claude Rains, Alec Guinness, Jose Ferrer, Anthony Quinn, Arthur Kennedy, Anthony Quayle.”

From Jordan to Seville and Almeria in Spain (“That’s where I felt the film would never end”), then to the deserts of Morocco. “It was invigorating to return to the desert,” O’Toole said, as if that’s where he felt closest to Lawrence, a character he meticulously researched--and still does.

“There are many, many T. E. Lawrences,” he said, “but they can be grouped under two categories: the real man and the legend. The real man I think I know as well as anybody. I like to think that David’s film provided the legend with its zenith.”

And his reaction to the film’s current restoration?

“It’s about time! There were nearly 30 missing minutes. And they were strange choices to nip. Not complete scenes, but rather as if a rodent had been nibbling at it.”

As he looped this new print, he couldn’t help but recall the first day of desert filming more than 28 years ago when David Lean told his his young charge, “This is going to be a great adventure.”

“And that’s exactly what it was,” O’Toole said. “It’s a journey I would travel again, every mile of the way, willingly.”

Like O’Toole, Omar Sharif also emerged from the picture an international star. “With a part like Ali in a film like ‘Lawrence,’ any idiot would have become a film star,” he said during a phone conversation from Paris.

“Working with Lean is always an event,” Sharif said, “because he takes such enormous care for every single shot. Therefore, everyone feels that he or she is contributing to something special, and indeed, you are.”

By way of example, Sharif described the first scene he filmed, in which his character, a sheik, comes riding out of the desert and confronts Lawrence at the well.

“It took one month to film that brief sequence,” Sharif said. “Not all the month was spent in filming, of course. There was much waiting for the right conditions. David had clear ideas about the look he wanted for the desert. He would place black rocks in the distance. He would even color the sand to attract the viewer’s eye. Then, after they’d driven out and done all that, 300 men had to sweep away the tire tracks.

“I still know that entire scene by heart. It was a pleasure to act those words by Robert Bolt. They’re all short one-syllable words, but they say everything. This is exactly what film writing should be.”

Sharif worked on “Lawrence” for 20 months. (Three years later, again under Lean’s direction, he spent only 12 months filming his title-role performance in “Doctor Zhivago.”)

“All the work in the desert was exhausting,” he said. “Camels don’t stay on their marks. They have larger strides than horses. If a camel leaves its mark by even one step, you’ve moved three feet out of the frame.”

Sharif, who rates “Lawrence of Arabia” as “David Lean’s best film,” said he will “be thrilled” to see the newly restored director’s cut. “But I’ll also look at that young actor on the screen with 15 missing pounds.”

Anthony Quinn was already an international star, a two-time Academy Award winner, when he traveled to Jordan to portray a tribal sheik.

“I fell in love with David Lean immediately,” Quinn said as he sat in a Los Angeles hotel suite. “David is one of the greatest directors alive. He lives in the atmosphere of the picture. He never leaves that picture for one second.

“He is a man of very long pauses, and when he says something, it’s after long consideration. It’s sifted through his genius, and then the flower blooms. And he makes that flower bloom in you. Through his own tremendous humanity, he brings out all the actor’s positive qualities.”

Lean spent all morning staging a scene “with thousands of camels and horses and riders” in which Lawrence asks Auda if they can attack the Turkish-held city of Aqaba the next day.

Finally, at noon, the shot was set up.

“So we rehearsed,” Quinn recalled, “and David said, ‘Let’s go for a take.’ I started to walk back into the scene when David, who is a very sensitive man, called me aside and asked if something was the matter.

“No, no, David, let’s do the scene.’ It had taken four hours to set the thing up!

“He said, ‘No, I want to know what’s the matter.’

“So I told him that because I know there’s going to be a huge battle in which I’ll lose a lot of men, perhaps I should go over, sit on a rock and think about my answer. I should say, ‘Yes, we attack tomorrow,’ but only after due consideration for my men.

“David thought a moment, took a long drag from his cigarette--which he smokes in the most amazing way, upside down--and then said, ‘Start moving the horses, we’re going to change the camera angle.’

“It took all afternoon. I was so embarrassed. And by the time it was ready, at 4:30, we had to do the scene in one take or lose the sun.

“So we did it and wrapped for the day.

“As David was getting into his car, I went up to him and said, ‘David, I apologize.’

“He says, ‘For what, Tony?’

“It was terrible to make you change the horses and the extras. I promise I’ll never do it again.’

“And he says, ‘Don’t you ever stop. You can suggest anything you want. I’m not that insecure.’ ”

In contrast to O’Toole, Sharif and Quinn, Jose Ferrer worked on “Lawrence of Arabia” for only three days and appears on screen for just five minutes. But to the Academy Award-winning star, whose motion picture roles span more than four decades, they’re the most important five minutes of his film career.

Ferrer recalled his brief but critical vignette during a phone conversation from Minneapolis, where he was filming “Old Explorers” with James Whitmore. Ferrer played the Turkish bey, whose humiliation and torture of Lawrence was a turning point in the adventurer’s life,

In late 1961 and early ‘62, Ferrer said, while the others were in Jordan, he was in India filming “Nine Hours to Rama.”

“We finished the picture in London,” he continued. “One day I bumped into Sam Spiegel in Berkeley Square. He saw me and said, ‘You’re just the guy I’m looking for. I still need to cast one role in ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’

“I said, ‘Send me the script.’

“So this massive script arrived, hundreds of pages long, and I couldn’t find the part. It turned out to be maybe three pages and two lines. I said to my agent, ‘Why is Spiegel trying to humiliate me? Why does he insult me?’ I was very hurt.

“But they showed me 30 minutes of already-assembled footage. I could see it was something quite special, though I didn’t realize how special until I arrived in Seville.

“There was very little conversation on the set, but we didn’t need to talk. David Lean, Peter O’Toole and I were instantly so in tune with each other, it was almost like being part of a string trio. O’Toole and Lean were Champagne and caviar.

“In 40 years of screen acting, I’ve made maybe 40 movies. But if I had to be judged as a film actor by only one performance, I would want to be judged by the five minutes in ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’ I deem those five minutes to be my best work.”

“Lawrence of Arabia” opens here Wednesday. A premiere to benefit the American Film Institute is scheduled for Sunday.