The Wild Geese

The film's European premiere in London was overshadowed by protests from anti-apartheid demonstrators angered that it had been shot in South Africa with the cooperation of the then white government. Although none of the protesters had seen the film to confirm this for themselves, they were also angry at its negative portrayal of black Africans. The producers handed out copies of positive reviews from the Soweto Times, South Africa's highest-circulation black newspaper, to the crowd, but the protesters threw them away.

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The producers initially wanted Burt Lancaster for the role of Rafer Janders, but when Lancaster began making changes to the script to give his character a central role, he was replaced by Richard Harris. Lancaster claimed he turned the role down because he considered the film "inferior."

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Richard Burton, 51, was in poor health during the shoot and found the more physical scenes very difficult.

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Richard Burton hated the script and the film's shoot. One day he told BBC reporter John Simpson: "If Elizabeth took me back, I would leave this film and this terrible heat right now and charter a plane to go where she is. But it's an old thing: I can't live with her, I can't live without her. But I adore Elizabeth and I always will."

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In his memoirs, Sir Roger Moore said that Ronald Fraser gave up drinking while making this film, but that Fraser decided to smoke local marijuana instead and was mostly stoned while working on the project.

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Among all the extras and actors on set, apart from the players cast as mercenaries recruited in London who had previously served in various British armed forces regiments and units, very few had real military training and real combat experience. One of them was Hardy Krüger, who played "Pieter Coetze." Krüger was born in Germany in 1928 and was drafted into the German Army in late 1944. In March 1945, he saw action against US forces in the 38th SS Division "Nibelungen." He was captured by US troops during these engagements in the final period of the war.

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Sir Richard Harris was known for bringing turmoil to film sets with his excessive drinking. To insure him, producer Euan Lloyd deposited half of the Irishman's salary as a bond; misbehavior costs were deducted and it was not handed over until the film was completed. Harris accepted the condition that Lloyd do the same for him, and that is what happened. At one point, however, Harris stayed completely dry throughout the film.

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Sir Roger Moore was disappointed that he could not act opposite his childhood hero Stewart Granger.

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Former mercenary Ian Yule, who was cast as Tosh in this film, had previously worked with the Irish mercenary Colonel Mike Hoare, whose adventures are said to have inspired the film. Yule introduced producer Euan Lloyd to Hoare, and Hoare eventually served as a consultant on the film to increase the realism of the combat scenes.

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Richard Burton suffered severe back pain during the shoot. In April 1981 he was hospitalized for liver and kidney problems, and it was found that his entire spine was coated with crystallized alcohol.

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In his autobiography, Sir Roger Moore recalled playing a prank on Richard Harris by placing a plastic snake in his bungalow. Harris did not scream, which would no doubt have annoyed him. Moore got him back by putting a real snake in his bungalow, which made him scream.

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According to producer Euan Lloyd, Sir Roger Moore loved to drink, although he had the ability to handle it. One morning, as he drove past Moore's house, Lloyd saw him standing in the front garden in his underwear, eyes closed, with a garden hose held over his head.

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In the casino scene in which Colonel Allen Faulkner (Richard Burton) flirts with a woman dressed as an Egyptian, the woman was actually Burton's wife, Susan Hunt.

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The film's technical and military adviser was the real-life former mercenary Colonel "Mad" Mike Hoare, who had led a group of European ex-soldiers in mercenary campaigns in the Belgian Congo in the 1960s and 1970s.

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The South African Film Board, despite being part of the racist apartheid regime, wanted real black South African actors to play key roles in this film rather than African-American or British Afro-Caribbean actors. John Kani (Sergeant Jesse) and Winston Ntshona (President Limbani) were initially reluctant to take part in a film in which white mercenaries intervene in African affairs and which portrayed a country with black majority rule in an extremely negative light. However, they were moved by the subplot of growing understanding and forgiveness between Krüger's and Ntshona's characters and ultimately decided to join the film.

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Richard Burton initially turned down this film because he did not want to glorify mercenaries.

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Pieter Coetzee was originally meant to be Rhodesian. When Hardy Krüger was cast, the character was changed to a Boer to explain Krüger's German accent.

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Stephen Boyd was considered for the role of Sandy but died before filming began.

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Before The Wild Geese opened in the United States, its backer Allied Artists collapsed, so the film received only a very limited release there. This explains its weak US box office compared with its strong takings elsewhere, which made it the fourteenth highest-grossing film worldwide in 1978. Its US performance may also have suffered from the absence of an American star.

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The Wild Geese, the seventeenth-century Irish mercenary army, inspired the film's title. The losing side of the 1688 Glorious Revolution — the overthrow of King James II by William of Orange, his son-in-law and nephew, and by his daughters Queen Mary and Queen Anne, which brought parliamentary democracy, the Toleration Act, the Bill of Rights and constitutional monarchy — was offered a pardon under the Treaty of Limerick on condition that it left the British Isles. As they departed they saw a flock of wild geese heading south for the winter, adopted the birds as their emblem, and then hired themselves out as a mercenary army to the highest bidder. The 1960s mercenary leader "Mad" Mike Hoare adopted the wild geese symbol as the emblem of his mercenaries serving in the Congo.

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Richard Burton and Richard Harris were delighted with how the film turned out. Harris said: "I was hardly walking in the gutter and then there was a bit of a scuffle with the boys at the end of the tunnel, one night in town. Was The Wild Geese (1978) a film? I thought it was a summer holiday."

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Most of the military equipment used in the film came from the South African Army, though some special weapons had to be imported from Britain. Producer Euan Lloyd said, "Even though the materiel could not fire live rounds, it was delayed for weeks by the British government because it was going to South Africa."

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"Whitty" (Kenneth Griffith) gives his age as 43, but Griffith was actually 56 during filming.

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This was the last film released by Allied Artists.

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While filming the scene in which the mercenaries run toward the plane, Richard Harris saved Graham Clarke's life. He noticed that a wing was about to cut off Clarke's head and rugby-tackled him to the ground. Ian Yule said it was the bravest thing he had ever seen a star do.

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Hardy Krüger was the last surviving of the four lead actors. He died on 19 January 2022.

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At the end of the film, Richard Burton's character Colonel Faulkner mentions that all the money is in $1,000 bills. People may think this is a mistake, but $1,000 bills are genuine US legal tender. The last were printed in 1945, and the government stopped distributing the note in 1969. These large notes were used for interbank and large private transactions and were rarely seen in circulation. Since their employer is a banker, a safe full of them is not out of the question.

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Sir Roger Moore celebrated his 50th birthday while filming in South Africa. He was a former soldier and helped some of the actors learn a military bearing (marching, saluting and so on).

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Although apartheid laws were in force, the entire cast and crew of the film lived together at the mineral spa Tschipise without any interference from the South African government.

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The casting of Jack Watson as Colour Sergeant Sandy was very apt. Watson had served as a physical training instructor in the Royal Navy during the Second World War.

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Stewart Granger was cast at very short notice. He replaced Joseph Cotten.

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Of the four leads, Richard Burton, Sir Roger Moore and Richard Harris used Israeli Uzi submachine guns, and Hardy Krüger had a Belgian FN FAL assault rifle in addition to his crossbow. At one point R. S. M. Moore, Harris and Burton used Walther 9 mm pistols while carrying the Sterling submachine gun, the standard British infantry weapon of the time. Most of the other mercenaries used FALs and Uzis, but at least two had Czech CZ25 and Danish Madsen submachine guns. In the final firefight they used heavier weapons looted from the airfield, such as Bren light machine guns, FN MAG general-purpose machine guns, the Vickers heavy machine gun and American-made World War II-era three-and-a-half-inch bazookas.

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Ironically, the real-life mercenary who inspired Richard Burton's character (Colonel Faulkner), "Mad" Mike Hoare, would die in his bed in 2020 at over 100 years of age.

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As already mentioned here, American producers wanted O. J. Simpson for the role eventually played by Roger Moore. The amusing reason he was passed over: the Americans said the character was described in the script as a Black Irishman.

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Richard Burton was initially reluctant to make the film, as he was extremely unwilling to work in the African heat and thought the script somewhat childish. He changed his mind when Richard Harris was brought in to replace another actor who had dropped out. Since Burton and Harris were old drinking colleagues with a shared interest in rugby, Burton set aside his reservations and became much more cooperative with the producer.

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Richard Burton was reported to have stuck to soft drinks throughout the three months of filming in South Africa.

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The mercenaries were assembled from various former members of different British armed forces regiments and units in London. Some of the mercenaries' former units can be identified by their cap badges: the Queen's Royal Lancers, the Parachute Regiment, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, the Black Watch, the Cheshire Regiment, the Royal Green Jackets, the Grenadier Guards, the Royal Fusiliers, the Royal Army Medical Corps, the King's Royal Rifle Corps and the Special Air Service.

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Sir Roger Moore said, "I was the only wild member of the cast. Harris and Burton were in the wagon and Krüger never came out of his room with his missus."

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Richard Harris pushed hard for his friend Oliver Reed to be offered a role in the film. Producer Euan Lloyd, however, was already worried about having several notoriously heavy-drinking actors in the lead parts and thought that adding one more would be inviting disaster, and he explained this to Harris. Harris reluctantly conceded that Lloyd was probably right.

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The film was widely condemned on its release for financing the Apartheid regime in South Africa.

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One day Richard Harris told Richard Burton: "You know, I've made this film before. As a kid in Limerick, I always imagined I was in Africa, fighting people or saving my gang." Burton replied, "As a small boy in Wales, I always imagined I was up trees with a machine gun."

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Robert Shaw was considered for a role (Faulkner or Janders), but he was shooting Force 10 from Navarone (1978).

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Ian Yule (Tosh Donaldson) was a real mercenary in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. He was cast locally in South Africa. He later brought in Michael "Mad Mike" Hoare, the former commander who had led a legion of mercenaries, 5 Commando, Armee Nationale Congolaise (5 Commando, not to be confused with the World War II British Commando force), during the Congo Crisis of the 1960s, as the film's technical adviser. Yule also served as a technical adviser on this film.

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The school rugby scenes with Emile (Paul Spurrier) were shot over two days at Marble Hill Park in Twickenham. The schoolboy extras came from Teddington Boys School, a comprehensive school. The badge on Paul's blazer is the school's badge. Several boys were chosen to pass the ball to Paul during the scene. They were picked because they were the shortest and matched his height best.

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The art department turned a large rondavel in the African bush into an English pub called The Red Ox to make everyone feel at home.

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The trailer in the UK revealed the fate of R. S. M. Sandy Young (Jack Watson).

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Given that the cast consisted of so many veteran actors, Glyn Baker claimed that the only reason his character survived so long in the plot was that he was one of the few actors young and fit enough to carry President Limbani for any length of time.

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Percy Herbert (Keith) was a World War II veteran; he was wounded while defending Singapore, was later captured by the Imperial Japanese Army and was held in a prisoner-of-war camp.

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Producer Euan Lloyd, knowing he had hired two of the industry's most legendary drinkers in Richard Burton and Richard Harris, placed half of both stars' salaries in escrow and had each of them sign a contract stating that they would stay both dry and well-behaved during the shoot, or he would withhold part of their salaries from the escrow accounts. Burton stayed dry for the entire shoot, and Harris nearly managed it until he returned from a location in South Africa to shoot interiors at Twickenham Film Studios in London, where he began getting roaring drunk at lunchtime in the studio commissionaire's office. He was sent back to the legendary Savoy Hotel, where he trashed the lobby. Lloyd used part of Harris's escrowed fee to pay for the damage, and a remorseful Harris stayed dry for the rest of the shoot.

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Stewart Granger turned down the role of Hugo Drax in this film.

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Future British minister Peter Hain helped organize the protests at the London premiere.

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Producer Euan Lloyd cast his daughter Rosalind Lloyd as Heather, one of the film's two main female characters, and his wife Jane Hylton as Mrs. Young.

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The film was protested at Irish cinemas by the Irish Anti-Apartheid movement.

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A subplot that appeared in the novel and the first screenplay drafts, in which Lieutenant Shawn Fynn has a love affair with a local woman during the training scene in Swaziland, was ultimately dropped by the production team on the grounds that it added very little to the story and slowed the film's pace.

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It has been suggested that Sir Edward Matheson was based on the real-life international businessman Tiny Rowland.

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Emile Janders wears the school uniform of Teddington School, in south-west London, not far from Twickenham Film Studios, where most of the filming took place. The uniform remained unchanged from the school's opening in 1962 until it was rebranded in 2011.

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The real Simbas were a relatively disorganized rebel force that fought against the Congolese government in the 1960s. The Congolese government hired Michael Hoare and his mercenaries to help defeat them.

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The Wild Geese is among the first feature films of Suzanne Danielle (Girl at Party), though she is not listed in the credits.

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In the bridge attack scene, the three vehicles were a pair of 1957 Bedford RL 3-ton 4x4 GS trucks and a 1958 Land-Rover 109'' Series II. The bridge ran westward at 22°19'1.18"S 30° 7'37.56"E and was attacked by a twin-engine Cessna 310D.

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David Ladd (Sonny) is the son of actor Alan Ladd.

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The Wild Geese is one of four films set and shot in Africa that Sir Roger Moore headlined in the 1970s, along with Gold (1974), Shout at the Devil (1976) and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).

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When producer Euan Lloyd tried to secure financing from United Artists, the studio wanted Michael Winner to direct. Lloyd refused and chose Andrew V. McLaglen instead.

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Lor Jürgens was considered for the role of Lieutenant Pieter Coetzee.

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Sir Laurence Olivier was considered for a role. He went on to play Rudolf Hess in Wild Geese II (1985).

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After looking at pre-production photographs and posters for the film, Palitoy based its "Tom Stone" figure (part of the Action Man line) on Jesse Blake. Some changes were later made to the design.

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In its original NBC television broadcast, roughly 12 minutes were cut from the ending, starting from the moment the plane takes off with all the survivors. NBC went to commercials and returned with the end credits.

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In the first scene featuring Captain Rafer Janders (Richard Harris), his son Emile is briefly seen working on a model car. The kit is a Mercedes-Benz Model 1906 roadster made by Bandai.

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American distributors wanted O. J. Simpson to play Lieutenant Shawn Fynn.

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Patrick Allen (Rushton) also narrated the UK trailer for the film. He was likewise the narrator of the trailer for Wild Geese II (1985).

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To balance the roles, some white actors were cast as the Eastern Europeans who advised and trained the Simbas, and just before the film's final battle an East German officer briefs the Simbas.

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Jeff Corey worked for only one night on the film.

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John Ford recommended Andrew V. McLaglen to Euan Lloyd.

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Six actors would go on to appear in The Sea Wolves (1980): Roger Moore, Jack Watson, Terence Longdon, Kenneth Griffith, Patrick Allen and Brook Williams.

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The film is set between November 1977 and March 1978. The plane hijacking and Limbani's kidnapping, shown as flashbacks, take place around October/November 1975, two years earlier in Burton's storyline.

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The film was criticized for its portrayal of African characters as racist.

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Richard Burton was a candidate to play 007 James Bond in Dr. No (1962).

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Before writing the screenplay for The Wild Geese, screenwriter Reginald Rose had created the 1974 ITC TV series The Zoo Gang, which was adapted from the book of the same name.

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In the book, Faulkner, while meeting with Matheson and recruiting in London, was under surveillance by plainclothes CID detectives from the Special Branch, the Royal Military Police, Military Intelligence and MI5. Faulkner was followed from the airport and then watched by the police (Special Branch), MI5 and military intelligence. However, this was cut from the film and the sequence was shortened.

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Principal photography took place in South Africa in the summer and autumn of 1977, with additional studio shooting done at Twickenham Film Studios in Middlesex. Sir Roger Moore estimates that filming in Africa lasted about three months, with the unit taking over a health spa near Tshipise in the northern Transvaal (now Limpopo); clashes also took place in the Messina Border Region. The fictional country is said to border Burundi, Rhodesia and Rwanda, while Zambia, Uganda and Swaziland are also noted as being nearby. The rugby scenes were shot over a two-day period at Marble Hill Park in Twickenham, with extras recruited from the nearby Teddington Boys' School. Marble Hill Close, near Marble Hill Park, was also used as a location. Most of the military equipment used in the film came from the South African Army, but as Lloyd noted, some special weapons had to be imported from Britain: "Although the equipment couldn't fire real bullets, it was held up for weeks by the British government because it was going to South Africa."

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The film was the result of producer Euan Lloyd's long-standing ambition to make an all-star adventure film in the style of The Guns of Navarone or Where Eagles Dare.

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In the film, the (fictional) country of Zembala is depicted primarily as important for its copper mining, which is why the character Matheson tries to intervene in the country's internal conflicts. This subplot is largely based on the real district of Zambia, whose economy depends heavily on the copper mining industry and on copper exports for much of the country's history. In the 21st century, Zambia continues to account for 4% of global copper production, making it Africa's second-largest copper producer and the world's seventh-largest copper producer.

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The character Arthur Witty was criticized as a homophobic stereotype.

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It was Jane Hylton's last film.

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This film has a connection to The Expendables (2010), in which the lead reunites with his mercenary comrades.

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According to his autobiography, Granger was also in the army.

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Both Faulkner and Janders appear to wear wedding rings on their ring fingers. However, according to the screenplay, Faulkner's wife died three years earlier and Janders has long been separated from Emile's mother, who lives in Paris.

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Roger Moore, Frank Finlay and Stewart Granger had all previously made films featuring Sherlock Holmes.

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