Yes, one knew that we were making something that was probably going to be very good if only because the writing was wonderful. Robert Bolt’s writing was wonderful in “Lawrence of Arabia” and in “Doctor Zhivago,” especially in “Lawrence of Arabia.”
It took 20 months to film “Lawrence of Arabia.” We were 20 months out there in the desert, wearing the same costume every day. Peter O’Toole and I, we had the same costume every day. There was so much care given to every shot. We used to wait some times a whole day for a cloud that was here to go there. You can’t imagine that all this is not going to make a good film.
I think it was a miracle that anybody financed “Lawrence of Arabia” because if you think of it, at that time, we started shooting in 1961 so they were preparing it from 1959. To think that you’re making the film, which is the probably one of the most expensive films in history because it cost $14 million in 1961, which is the equivalent of $200 million now. It’s very expensive. Without any stars because it was our first films, Peter and I, of course we had Alec Guinness and Anthony Quinn in secondary parts. But that’s not a lot for that investment. And it’s about Arabs on camels crossing the desert from left to right and from right to left. There’s no woman, there’s no love story, and there’s no action. How did you expect to make your money back? Four hours of it - it was an incredible gamble or very clever people. But David Lean was coming out after having made “Bridge on the River Kwai” so they trusted him.
Your entrance in “Lawrence of Arabia” is one of the most memorable on film. Did you know what that was going to look like while you were filming?
I really can’t tell you. I knew that it was very important and actually he wanted it to last a lot longer. When we shot it, it lasted a lot longer than it does in the film. But then the studio and [producer Sam] Spiegel really thought that it was boring. They all thought he was mad; he had gone mad making an entrance that long where you see nothing and the silence. So he had to shorten it a little bit because of the studio.
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