‘Chariots of Fire’ producer caught in bodyline drama

Press, 27 November 1982, Page 15

‘Chariots of Fire’ producer caught in bodyline drama

David- Puttnam, producer of the Oscar-winning film “Chariots of Fire,” has run into a barrage of verbal fast bowling from-the cricket establishment over his unflattering portrait of the former England ' captain, Douglas Jardine, in. a planned sporting epic about the “bodyline” tour of Australia. X . On BBC. television this month. Puttham said the

film was about sportsmanship. However, colleagues of Jardine say the script brings his memory into disrepute. The have met the producer and have asked for changes to the provisional script. Otherwise they threaten to withdraw co-operation and may demand the removal of < their names from the film. Puttnam says that he is willing to listen to all criticism, “but at the end of the

day I am making a drama and not a documentary. We will show Jardine as an immensely complex, troubled, and unhappy man. He ends the film as a classic victim of the British Establishment: a career and a reputation destroyed.” In 1932-33, Jardine's side visited Australia and won the most controversial test series 4-1 against a team which included the legendary Don Bradman.. Jardine’s fast bowlers, notably Harold Larwood, used tactics which the Australians condemned as “unsporting.” At Adelaide, in January, 1933, two Australian batsmen were injured. In the subsequent flurry of political and diplomatic protests, sporting relations between the countries were strained and there were even calls for Australia to leave the Bob Wyatt, now 80, was Jardine’s vice-captain on the tour. After reading the film script he said: “Jardine is made out to be an absolute cad. Although I never agreed, with the method of attack he used, I was very fond of Douglas. The way the film sees him is very wrong and in my. loyalty to the man I

am quite prepared to stand up for him. It would be awful for his family to have his name smeared like this.” G. 0. “Cubby" Allen, also 80, a senior member of the M.C.C. and a former England captain himself, refused to bowl bodyline tactics for Jardine. He, too, is disturbed that Puttnam shows the exWinchester and Oxford man behaving in an unprincipled way. “We had many disagreements but the man was not a cheat, as the script appears to suggest. Douglas was tough and determined, not an easy person to get on with and appeared ■ to see the Australians as an enemy. At the same time, he was a man of great principle and we must nbt let him down.” Puttnam stresses that further revisions of the script will take place before film-

ing is due to begin in early 1984. “We have a fine director, Bruce Beresford, and we have the money. It won’t be made, however, if I feel it is not a film we can be proud of. I have no intention of producing a cheap-skate film.” He has already “written out” a largely fictionalised episode where an Australian batsman, is carried from the Adelaide wicket, head bleeding, while Jardine lies uncaring on the ground. Both Allen and Wyatt had strongly objected to this scene on the grounds that it was inaccurate.

Puttnam is standing by the script where it suggests that Jardine was persuaded by a British Government Minister, the late Jimmy Thomas, to use bodyline against the Australians. Historians have failed to substantiate this claim but Puttnam said: “We know the Colonial Office in those days had it in for the Australians because they were proving a troublesome , lot. Jimmy. Thomas knew Jardine’s father. I’m not saying there were any .direct orders but that’s how the Establishment has a'wavs worked, by re-

mote control. Then, as now, sport was used as a political weapon.” Wyatt, however, is certain that the inference of gqvemment meddling in cricket at that time is incorrect. “That simply is not the way things happened,” he said. Allen too, says the story is “rubbish.” • Puttnam says that he has not consulted Jardine’s widow about the script. “We don’t mention her. We virtually portray him as a single man: • ’ • ■. . “I’m not sure about the best way to deal with this question. We have enough evidence he was not a nice

man. If we did approach her, we might end up with the riddle, which Douglas Jardine?” Mrs Jardine, who lives abroad in seclusion, told me that her husband felt scarred by the bodyline controversy throughout his life. She, too, has felt its shadow and when I pointed out to Puttnam that the widow might feel strongly at any slight on her husband’s reputation, he agreed that at some stage when the film had been shot, he would consider seeing her. In “Chariots of Fire” — the story of British Olympic sprinters of the 1920 s —

some names were changed. But Puttnam- told me that the Burghley family had raised no objections to the way in which the sportsman’s life had been dramatised; notably a champagne hurdling session on the lawns of the ancestral home. Gubby Allen says he has told Puttnam: “I’m afraid with this script you are going to be laughed at. Technically you have got things wrong and where ‘Chariots of Fire’ was gentle and romantic, this is rather nasty.”

Puttnam concedes that to sell the film to the American market, he has had to change some details, such as Bradman getting caught behind the wicket instead of being out leg before wicket. “Given the nature of films, there is no way I could ever explain to an American audience what lbw is.” . He describes himself as a genuine cricket freak interested in the minutiae of the game. As such he says he has immensely enjoyed meeting the cricketing heroes of his childhood. Whether he and the game remain friends depends on . how he reconciles the many views of Jardine — a man of whom he says “there are as many opinions as memories.” -j

By

PETER JEELEY

“Observer,” London