Badmovies.org Forum

Another film, which I have always wanted to see, even if I have yet see it, because of the subject matter, but a film that if something could go wrong it did. The 1968 version of The Charge of the Light Brigade.

A writer who died during the pre-production.
The next writer being fired for refusing to do a rewrite of his script.
With the next writer after that turning in a script of over 300 pages.

A stunt coordinator fired for abusing the horses in the film.

A star whose off-screen behavior was out of control.

Extras who were constantly getting into physical and verbal confrontations with the locals.

An editor who edited the film in such a way as to leave huge gaps in the story. Which gaps were suppose to be then covered over by animation. (More on that later.)

A director who was a tyrant on the set.

The animation, which some regard as being the best part of the film, was left unfinished when the film was 1st shown to audiences.

And even Mother Nature got into the act, as an earthquake destroyed the hotel which was being used by the people making the film.

In the late 1940s, Laurel and Hardy were without film employment. Earlier in the decade, they ended their long association with producer Hal Roach and signed to make a series of films at both 20th Century Fox and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In post-World War II Europe, Laurel and Hardy were enjoying a new popularity with audiences that had been unable to see their movies during wartime. As a result of this, the pair received an offer from a French-Italian cinematic consortium to star in a film to be produced in France for $1.5 million, a large budget for the era.[1]

The production of Atoll K was riddled with many problems that caused the production to be extended abnormally. Ida Laurel, Stan Laurel’s widow, told biographer John McCabe, "I’m hardly likely to forget the date we left for France and the date we returned – April 1, 1950, and April 1, 1951. But there was no April Fooling about that terrible year. That bloody picture was supposed to take twelve weeks to make, and it took twelve months."[2]

From the beginning, there were disagreements on the film’s screenplay. Laurel was unhappy with the storyline envisioned by French director Léo Joannon and insisted on bringing Alfred Goulding and Monty Collins to aid in the screenplay’s creation (Alf Goulding received no on-screen credit and Monty Collins was credited with "gags"). There were also considerable problems in communications, since neither Laurel nor Hardy spoke French and Joannon spoke very little English.[1]

During the production, the two comedy stars encountered serious problems. Laurel’s pre-existing diabetes was aggravated and he developed colitis, dysentery and a prostate ulcer while on the French locations for the film. He eventually required hospitalization,[3] and his widow would later fault the quality of the French medical care, claiming that at one point, she had to substitute for an absent nurse by changing her husband’s bandages. Laurel’s weight dropped to 114 pounds, and for most of the production he could only work in 20 or 30-minute spurts.[4]

Hardy, however, saw his already hefty frame expand to 330 pounds while in France, and he required medical care for cardiac fibrillation and the flu. Adding to the medical problems was Italian actor Adriano Rimoldi, who played the stowaway, when he fell from a docked yacht and required a month's recuperation away from the production.[3]

When they were able to work, Laurel and Hardy saw their relationship with Joannon fray dramatically. Ida Laurel would later claim Joannon was an incompetent who spent three days filming a lake because, as she said, "it was the most photogenic lake he’d ever seen."[2] In the middle of the production, US film director John Berry was quietly brought in to work with the comedy team. Berry’s US career had been ruined by the Hollywood blacklist and he sought to start over in France. However, his participation was kept secret out of the fear that the film would not get a US theatrical release if it became known that a blacklisted director was at its helm.[1] Berry’s contribution was not publicly acknowledged until 1967, when film historian William K. Everson cited the uncredited director’s input in his book The Films of Laurel and Hardy.[5] While Berry never publicly acknowledged his work on Atoll K, the film's leading lady Suzy Delair confirmed his role during an interview with historian Norbert Aping.[1]