Prince-P

In 1929, the English novelist Christopher Isherwood moved to Berlin. As a young gay man, he was fascinated by the German capital's orgiastic cabarets and the city's libertine nightlife. Isherwood socialised primarily with a coterie of expatriate writers, including Stephen Spender, W. H. Auden and Paul Bowles, but he also interacted with many outcasts and marginalised Berliners. During this time, the author met the 19-year-old British flapper Jean Ross. And she, of course, was the young lady who would become world-famous as "Sally Bowles" in Christopher Isherwood's autobiographical novel "Goodbye to Berlin" some years later.

It soon became apparent that many people had been profoundly impacted by Christopher Isherwood's book. In 1951, it was brought to life on Broadway as the play "I Am a Camera". Fifteen years later, the text was transformed into a glitzy musical entitled "Cabaret". It was precisely this version that the young choreographer Bob Fosse saw and decided to bring to the silver screen. And fortunately, his vision included the extraordinaire talented Liza Minelli in the lead role.

Bob Fosse decided early on to focus the film on the venue where Sally Bowles performs. He wanted to use the "Kit Kat Klub" as a metaphor for the decadence of the Weimar Republic in the 1930s. Therefore, the director deleted most of the musical numbers staged outside the club. The only exception is a scene in a rural beer garden towards the end of the film. There, a young boy dressed as a Hitler Youth suddenly starts singing a militant Nazi anthem.

The movie was a massive success at the box office. And it was an even bigger triumph at the 45th Academy Awards. "Cabaret" won eight Oscars. One statuette went to director Bob Fosse and another to leading lady Liza Minelli. The film also "boasts" of another record. "Cabaret" is the picture that has won the most Oscars, without also grabbing the Best Picture award ("The Godfather" won that).

In 1937, the world-famous Danish author Karen Blixen wrote an autobiographical novel about the 18 years she spent running a huge coffee plantation in Kenya. Many directors, including David Lean and Nicolas Roeg, had "Out of Africa" on their to-do lists. Even Orson Welles was fascinated by the book. In fact, the celebrated filmmaker already had inquired if Greta Garbo was interested in playing the lead. However, nothing happened until the head of Universal Pictures asked Sydney Pollack to adapt Baroness Blixen's story into a film.

The director initially envisioned Audrey Hepburn as the Danish writer, but when she said no, the role went to Meryl Streep instead. She learned Karen Blixen's accent by listening to recordings of the author reading her own works. The male lead then went to Robert Redford, an actor Sidney Pollack had already worked with in several films. The third major role was played by Klaus Maria Brandauer, who had impressed Pollack with his performance in "Never Say Never Again".

The movie's production designer spent a year in a suburb of Nairobi, where Universal Pictures built a replica of the city circa 1913. Local craftsmen erected an old-style hotel, some government buildings, a church, a marketplace and a full-scale railway station. Sydney Pollack then arranged for some lions to be imported from California. This was essential, as the ones found in Africa weren't trained to "act". Unfortunately, one of the shackled lions didn't react fiercely enough when confronting Meryl Streep. According to rumor, Pollack immediately ordered the animal to be released.

The movie's length, 150-minutes, limited the number of plays each day, dampening the revenue potential. Still, "Out of Africa" was a critical hit and a solid performer at the box office. At the Academy Awards that year, the film was nominated for eleven Oscars, winning in the categories Best Picture, Best Directing and Best Writing.

Samuel Bronston was something of an oddball, even within the notoriously eccentric world of show business. Born in Russia in 1908, he immigrated to the United States at the age of 30. Bronston settled in Hollywood, where he made a lot of important contacts in the film industry. Ten years later, he moved to Spain. After securing investments from a couple of local banks, Bronston had a vast studio complex built in the town of Las Rozas, outside Madrid. His plan was to start producing a series of spectacular movies, involving massive casts and giant sets.

One of Samuel Bronston's first projects was to tell the story of the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900. There was just one problem. Hundreds of extras with Chinese appearance were needed to make the movie believable. Bronston, therefore, advertised in various newspapers for people who fit the description. In the end, he hired so many Asian waiters that it was impossible to find an open Chinese restaurant in Spain while the movie was being made.

To everyone's surprise, Samuel Bronston refused to use miniatures or matte paintings during the filming of "55 Days at Peking." Instead, he insisted that all the sets be built to a life-size scale, regardless of the cost. Bronston then hired Nicholas Ray to manage the movie. But that didn't work out so well. The famous director's vision for the film clashed starkly with Bronston's. After several weeks of constant quarrelling, Nicholas Ray, therefore, was ordered to leave the set. Even though the work on the movie was far from completed.

Sadly, "55 Days at Peking" was a commercial disaster in the United States. Samuel Bronston had produced the movie on a hefty budget of $10 million, but it only earned half that amount in theatrical rentals. Since his next big project, "The Fall of the Roman Empire", also bombed at the box office, Samuel Bronston went bankrupt. He never managed to make another picture again.