Trivia / White Hunter, Black Heart

• Acclaimed Flop: The movie received good reviews, but made only $2 million dollars against a $24 million budget.
• Dawson Casting: Clint Eastwood was sixty at the time playing John Wilson, based on John Huston who was forty-four in 1950.
• One for the Money; One for the Art: Clint Eastwood agreed to make The Rookie (which later came out the same year; not to be confused with either of the sports movies of that title) if Warner Bros. financed this film. Ironically, neither this film nor The Rookie were hits.
• Prop Recycling: The small steamboat in the whitewater scene is the same boat from The African Queen. The boat used for the scenes in the rapids was electrically powered, but was made to appear to be steam-powered by fitting it with engines and motors developed by special effects expert John Evans. The glass fiber boat was built in England and shipped to Zimbabwe especially for the movie.
• Write What You Know: The film is a very thinly fictionalized account of author Peter Viertel's (he wrote both the novel and the screenplay) experiences on location with John Huston while shooting The African Queen

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