Trivia / 55 Days at Peking

• Box Office Bomb: Budget: $17 million. Box Office: $10 million.
• California Doubling: The movie could not be filmed in China due to Cold War politics. Instead, an epic 60-acre replication of Peking (Beijing) was built in Spain. Much of it gets destroyed on-screen.
• Fake Nationality: Apart from the use of Yellowface, we also have some Fake Russians. In fact, this applies to a lot of characters.
• Hostility on the Set: Charlton Heston didn't get on with Ava Gardner due to her difficult attitude.
• Money, Dear Boy: Screenwriter Philip Yordan admitted that "what interested me in 55 Days at Peking was $400,000."
• Troubled Production:
  • By all accounts, 55 Days at Peking had a rather haphazard genesis for such an elaborate film. Charlton Heston had declined an offer to star in The Fall of the Roman Empire for Samuel Bronston, and Nicholas Ray's suggestion to Bronston that he make a film about the French Revolution received no support from Bronston. Then Bronston's screenwriter friends Bernard Gordon and Philip Yordan suggested the Boxer Rebellion as a possible subject,^note The two would later over the reason for the choice of subject: Yordan claimed he was inspired when his wife came across the title in a history book she found at a rummage sale, while Gordon insisted he'd been pitching the Boxer Rebellion for several months before he and Yordan approached Bronston which was pitched to Heston on a plane ride. Heston agreed, until he read a long, sloppy script treatment which he insisted be heavily rewritten. Ray, whose career was on the decline, said he took the job because he feared he would never work again if he declined. Heston would later say that he never had more misgivings going into a project than with Peking.
  • Like many historical epics, the film ran into issues with budget and logistics: producer Samuel Bronston constructed a set representing turn-of-the-century Peking in Madrid at a cost of $900,000, while the production grew so strapped for extras and equipment they borrowed them from Lawrence of Arabia, filming concurrently in Almeria and Seville. Many of the sets, which were already been constructed for Fall of the Roman Empire, had to be altered or in many cases rebuilt to resemble turn-of-the-century Peking.^note The set was so expansive that, Heston later mused, nearly two-thirds of it never appeared on film There were also not enough Chinese people in Spain for crowd scenes, so they had to recruit hundreds from the United States.
  • There were myriad on-set difficulties as well: director Nicholas Ray, from a combination of stress, drinking and misgivings about helming such a large-scale project, suffered a heart attack halfway through production and was replaced by Andrew Marton (along with Guy Green, who directed several scenes with the main stars uncredited).^note Adding insult to injury, it's claimed that most of Ray's scenes were reshot by Marton as they were a poor match for the later material. The film's first cinematographer, Aldo Tonti, quit just before filming began, forcing Jack Hildyard to take over with little preparation. Ava Gardner had a long-running nervous breakdown during production: she repeatedly showed up drunk on set, cursed out Ray and Marton on several occasions, and once ruined a day's shoot because an extra took her photograph; ultimately, she received an off-screen death scene because the crew no longer wished to work with her. Charlton Heston and David Niven brought in their own screenwriters to beef up their characters (the long sequence where they blow up a Chinese armory was added so Niven's character seemed more heroic). Bernie Gordon would later complain that the cast were "a bunch of prima donnas" who were impossible to satisfy.
  • Worse still, the film flopped at the box office and (along with the similarly-expensive The Fall of the Roman Empire) destroyed Bronston's production company.
• Uncredited Role: Andy Ho as an extra.
• Wag the Director: Charlton Heston and David Niven brought in their own screenwriters to make their characters more heroic.
  • Some film historians believed that Nicholas Ray was a director In Name Only, since he was sick through most of filming and second unit directors Andrew Marton and Guy Green frequently substituted for him. One biographer of Samuel Bronston says that Bronston even ordered Marton to reshoot a lot of Ray's scenes, as he felt the tonal mismatch between the different directors' material was too obvious.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Producer Samuel Bronston wanted Deborah Kerr for the Baroness, whilst Charlton Heston suggested either Jeanne Moreau or Melina Mercouri for the part. Anne Bancroft was also considered. However, Nicholas Ray insisted on Ava Gardner playing her.
  • While David Niven was attached to the project from the beginning, Stephen Boyd and Stuart Whitman were the studio's choice to play Major Lewis. Samuel Bronston, however, decided that he wanted an American star who could equal Niven and chose Charlton Heston, who had worked with him on El Cid.
  • Katharine Hepburn was considered to play the Empress Dowager. Myrna Loy was also considered.
  • Bronston hoped to cast Alec Guinness from The Fall of the Roman Empire in an unspecified role, but Guinness was leery about working with Bronston again after Fall and turned him down.
  • Tom Courtenay and Peter McEnery were approached to play British soldiers but turned down the offer, not wanting to commit to such a massive project.
• Working Title: The movie was first announced as The Hell Raisers in 1959.

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