"Hang On A Minute, Lads, I've Got A Great Idea" - The Making Of The Italian Job
Get your skates on, mate - here's the story of how they pulled off The Italian Job, straight from the mouths of Michael Caine, Benny Hill, Noel Coward and Co.
A version of this article appeared in Hotdog.
Michael Caine as Charlie Croker
It’s hard to think of another actor who could have played stylish, self-assured con Charlie Croker with quite the same dash as the man formerly known as Maurice Mickelwhite. In fact, it’s pretty difficult to see how The Italian Job would have got made without Caine’s involvement. Although he wasn’t credited as the film’s producer, it was Caine who first put the movie to Paramount.
“Alfie was a Paramount picture, and at Cannes, the company gave a bug lunch at the Carlton Hotel. Sitting next to me was a man I had never met before and we started talking. ‘What do you do?’ I asked him. ‘I won’t tell you what I do,’ he said, ‘but I’ll tell you what I did yesterday. Yesterday,’ he pronounced in a loud voice,’ I bought Paramount Studios for $152 million.’ A lot of people at the table, of course, already new this, but those of us who didn’t abruptly stopped talking. When he resumed, it was with a new topic and a new attitude to this little foreign man. His name was Charlie Bluhdorn. ‘Do you have any scripts you want to make?’ he asked. I did - and I told him so - and that’s how I made The Italian Job!”
Caine’s only regret about the picture is that it did very poor box office in the US. But the thing is, the Americans weren’t meant to get The Italian Job, a film that’s as British as sipping tea while listening to The Kinks. And just as it’s one of the films that established Caine as a true international talent, it was also instrumental in his becoming recognised as the UK’s number one ambassador of cool.
Noel Coward As Mr Bridger
While millions around the world are familiar with ‘The Master’s’ prodigious theatrical output, it’s fair to say that there’s a sizeable number of folk who only know him for his work in The Italian Job.
“Noel was gregarious and gay - in every sense of the word,” recalls Michael Caine in his autobiography. “Each Wednesday evening when we were shooting, I used to have dinner with him at The Savoy. I always think of those occasions as among the most quintessentially English things I’ve ever done.
“Noel had a free room for life at The Savoy, he told me, because during the war, he had been playing cabaret there and had sung on through a night of terrible bombing. ‘I wasn’t really being brave,’ he told me. ‘Once the air raid started, people weren’t allowed to leave and so I had a captive audience for the first and only time in my life, so I sang every bloody song that I knew before they could escape in the morning. Not only did I get the satisfaction of doing that but I was given a free room for life. Not a bad evening’s work…”
Although it’s fair to assume he thought The Italian Job a tad beneath him, Coward had the good grace to deliver a great performance. And since it was his final turn in front of a movie camera, it’s appropriate that in a film associated with Michael Caine and Minis, the best moment belongs to Noel Coward; Bridger receiving his fellow inmates’ acclaim, which doubles as a glorious send-off to this marvellous, much-missed Englishman.
Benny Hill As Professor Simon Peach
If you weren’t sure whether The Italian Job was a British film, the appearance of comedy king Benny Hill ought to remove any doubt.
Although he ruled independent TV for the best part of 30 years, Benny’s contribution to cinema could politely be described as pygmic. Besides the toy maker in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, his only other role of consequence was that of the fat lady fetishist-cum-computer expert Professor Simon Peach.
According to producer Michael Deeley, Benny had more to offer cinema than a couple of extended cameos. “He was a brilliant comic - a real one off. If any other country had produced a comedian like him, they’d have pressganged him into every film possible. But Benny did what he liked to do and you have to admire him for that.”
Doing what he liked included seldom fraternising with his co-stars. As Michael Caine recalls in What’s It All About?, “As a great admirer, I was looking forward to working with him and getting to know him. The first part was a pleasure but the second part was impossible. Benny was very pleasant to all of us - unfailingly courteous, kind and professional, but it was not possible to make any real contact with him. He was a truly solitary soul and never mixed with the cast socially even when we were all staying in the same hotel. Like a lot of comedians I have known, Benny seemed a sad person.”
All the same, Hill contributed greatly to the evolution of his character. “Initially, Peach’s payment was to be a massive train set but I couldn’t understand why anyone would risk so much for so little so I had them rewrite the part.” Consequently, Peach became an extension of Hill’s women-obsessed TV persona.
While he was pleased with his rewrites, Benny was far from happy when he discovered that Peach, who he’d played as a deaf Yorkshireman, was to be redubbed for American audiences. “That was the most important lesson I learnt from The Italian Job,” Hill later wrote. “It was a fun experience but I know that, if I am to do my best work, I have to have complete control of the material.”
Unsurprisingly, Benny Hill never worked in movies again.
Peter Collinson As The Director
One question that’s often asked about The Italian Job is whatever became of the director? Although he would relocate to Los Angeles, Peter Collinson’s future contributions to film consisted of such Troy McCulure-calibre fair as The Man Called Noon and Tigers Don’t Cry.
His failure to make it in America is all the sadder for The Italian Job being so confidently handled. In the past, critics were sidetracked by the sharp clothes, the witty banter and the Quincy Jones score but it’s Collinson who ultimately holds the movie together. While he might not have dreamt up the escape through the streets, rooftops and sewers of Turin, it was he who was responsible for capturing stunt driver Rey Julienne’s fantasy on camera.
Collinson also choreographed a superb ballet featuring the Minis and the pursuing Fiats that would have provided one of the film’s high points had writer Troy Kennedy-Martin not complained that it undercut the urgency of the chase. The excised material would appear on futures DVD releases as a deleted scene.
Collinson’s career collapse is in direct contrast to The Italian Job’s spirit of fun and frivolity. Besides a starry version of And The There Were None and Tomorrow Never Knows - a Canadian exploitation picture starring Oliver Reed - there was nothing in his later CV to match his 1967 adaptation of the Nell Dunn novel Up The Junction let alone The Italian Job.
Nor is there any way of knowing exactly why his career took such a dramatic downturn for, on December 16 1980, Peter Collinson died of cancer. He was 42.
Michael Deeley As The Producer
Deeley’s career is the exact opposite of Peter Collinson’s in as much as it really only took off after The Italian Job. With his previous credits including such forgettable fair as The Stroke Of Nine, Sandy and The Restless Nature Girl (an early expose of nudist camps), it was the success with which Deeley nurtured his ace caper movie that paved the way for him to bankroll such classics as The Wicker Man, The Man Who Fell To Earth, The Deer Hunter and Blade Runner.
It’s not surprising that Deeley remembers The Italian Job with great fondness. “The film came about because Paramount had hit upon the idea that, if you made a lot of films in Britain, you only needed a few of them to be successful to make a lot of money. So I was given $3m and told to go and shoot my movie. I think we went about $200,000 over-budget but that didn’t really matter because the film was a hit.”
Indeed, the only regrets Deeley has are over his dealings with Mini manufacturers BMC. “We presumed they’d be delighted that there was going to be this film that would make heroes of these Minis. You couldn’t buy advertising like that. So I said, ‘Here’s your chance. We need some help from you.’”
Instead of a limitless supply of cars, Deeley got the cold shoulder. “They were completely disinterested. I think they finally sold us six Minis at trade price and the other 30 we had to purchase retail. I think that the continued existence of Fiat and the demise of BMC tells its own story about their behaviour.”
Troy Kennedy Martin As The Screenwriter
It says a lot of Troy Kennedy Martin that you’d still probably know who he was even if he hadn’t written The Italian Job. The author of Clint Eastwood caper movie Kelly’s Heroes and Arnie actioner Red Heat, Kennedy Martin penned episodes of Colditz and The Sweeney and dreamed up one of the few truly indispensable pieces of eighties TV, nuclear drama Edge Of Darkness. He also single-handedly created Z Cars.
Despite his fine ear for dialogue and keen understanding of plot mechanics, Kennedy Martin’s masterstroke was his insistence on the use of a certain make of escape car. “I immediately thought that the cars used should be Minis. Minis were classless, very fast and sort of cheeky. They represented the new Britain which was kind of laddish, cheerful, self-confident and didn’t take itself too seriously.”
As excellent as his screenplay is, Kennedy Martin can’t take credit for the superb, cliff-hanging climax. Paramount came up with the idea with a view to possibly making a sequel. If the screenwriter had his way, Croker and Co. would have simply driven off into the sunset. “I thought it was a superb ending but if a writer had come up with an idea like that, they’d have laughed at it, torn it up and thrown it in the bin.”
Remy Julienne As The Getaway Driver
And who should be at the heart of the very English Italian Job than French rally champion Remy Julienne! This was no ordinary Gaul, mind you. As Michael Deeley puts it, “Remy Julienne was simply the best. His stunt team were like no other in the business. They were truly fearless.”
Julienne’s enthusiasm for the film was boundless. “It was a dream opportunity to be able to express all my fantasies and dreams and ideas.” As a consequence, for the first time ever on the big screen and an entire decade before the carmageddon of The Blues Brothers, we witness a car chase that takes place within a shopping arcade, across a weir and through a sewer.
Remy attributed such inventiveness to the enthusiasm of the studio. “The producers never stopped us. They only encouraged us.” Encouraged them, that is, to undertake a 60ft jump across the rooftops of Turin. Shot within the confines of the Fiat factory for safety purposes, it was, Julienne recalls, a truly nerve-wracking feat.
“It was a Saturday and since they had the day off, somewhere in the region of 600 Fiat workers came to say goodbye to us. They all touched their Virgin Mary medallions and made the sign of the cross.
“It was a time of very intense emotion. Peter Collinson tried to calm us down by saying that if we made the jump he’d buy us all bottles of scotch. I said that I’d prefer champagne. We eventually took the jump at 110kph. One car broke its suspension, another broke its engine. Nobody died. And no sooner were we done than I saw Peter Collinson running over to me in a coat that was bulging with bottles of champagne!”
Ken Norris As The Special Effects Man
The man who actually had to blow the bloody doors off, special effects wiz Ken Norris was The Italian Job’s problem solver. Destroying said van was, as it turned out, one of his simpler tasks. “A lot of the things in the script sounded pretty easy to complete but when it came to, say, getting the Minis onto the back of the coach, we discovered that we had an entire army of difficulties to overcome.”
The coach stunt was particularly tricky since, in order to get the Minis aboard, both they and the bus had to be travelling at high speed. As Norris remembers, “It was terrifying to to be in that coach as the Minis came on board. Remy Julienne and his boys had amazing control over the cars but it was still pretty hair-raising.
“I was so concerned that, to give the coach driver some protection, I installed some joists between him and the vehicles. It was just as well that I did because, when the third Mini pulled in, the cars shot forward through the joists, leaving the driver with his belly on the steering wheel! I dread to think what might have happened if we hadn’t taken those precautions.”
Norris also oversaw the disposal of the vehicles. “In the film it looks as if the criminals simply push the cars out of the coach but, at the speeds they were travelling, that simply couldn’t be done so I had to use a special device to literally blow the Minis out of the coach.”
And how did the cars look once they made it down the side of the mountain? “By the time they came to rest, they were nothing but a solid cube of metal.”
Don Black as The Lyricist
”It became a cult because people just couldn’t get enough of it, “says songwriter Don Black. The man behind such Bond themes as The Man With The Golden Gun, Thunderball, Diamonds Are Forever, Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough, Black is also rightfully celebrated for ‘Getta Bloomin’ Move On!’, the corking cockney theme tune to The Italian Job.
Recalls Black, “It was a great tune which really complimented the movie. I’d seen a rough cut with Peter Collinson so I knew what the mood of the picture was - big and brassy, bags of swagger. After that, it was just up to me and Quincy to capture that feel in song.”
Quincy is of course Quincy Jones, record producer extraordinaire and the composer of the themes from The Color Purple and In Cold Blood. And what was it like working with a living legend? “Lovely, actually. Quincy is a hugely talented man but he doesn’t lord it over you.
“The only problem we had was with all of the cockney rhyming slang. It took a couple of weeks for Quincy to understand what ‘Daisy Roots’ and ‘Hampstead Heath’ referred to. Once he got the hang of it, though, there was no stopping him. It was rather strange to hear this man with so strong an American accent complaing that his ‘Gregory’ was stiff.”
And what does Don Black make of The Italian Job today? “I still think it really stands up as a picture. Although I just wish people would get the name of the theme tune right. Then again, I suppose that’s a measure of just how catchy ‘The Self-Preservation Society’ was as a hook!”
Philip Wrestler As The Second Unit Director
Philip Wrestler is one of a number of supporting players and backroom boys who were every bit as instrumental to the success of The Italian Job as the big cheeses.
Others deserving of praise include cinematographer Douglas Slocombe (who’d later lens Rollerball, Close Encounters and the Indiana Jones movies) and brilliantly-monikered production designer Disley Jones. On the acting from, meanwhile, those deserving nods include Tony Beckley (Camp Freddie) and the formidable Irene Handl.
It was Wrestler, however, who was entrusted with shooting the picture’s much celebrated finale. “Peter Collinson took one look at what Paramount came up with and said, ‘I’m not going to shoot this rubbish,’ and Michael Caine didn’t like it much either, so I was told to go and put it together.”
Needless to say, filming a coach hanging over the edge of an alpine ravine wasn’t without its headaches. Indeed, both the coach and the picture might have gone up in smoke had it not been for the bravery of special effects man Ken Norris: “I’d just finished balancing the coach in the right position when the helicopter swept over.
The downdraught lifted the coach off the ground so I had to grab hold of the bumper. The whole thing was just about to lift me off my feet when the first assistant director stepped in and together we were able to hold it down until the chopper disappeared!”
As for what Wrestler came up with by way of a conclusion, it’s impossible to imagine the film ending any other way. As the man himself puts it, “Something people thought was going to be a rubbishy ending worked very well and did the film proud.”
Turn As The Host City
With a script that called for elaborate chase sequences, traffic jams and general chaos, producer Michael Deeley originally assumed that he would have to shoot the majority of the Turin-set Italian Job using back projection and soundstages.
“But then a dear friend of mine put a call through to Gianni Agnelli who was the head of Fiat at the time. And since the business of Fiat is the business of Turin, and since the police respected Mr Agnelli, we were allowed to shoot where we wanted!”
The assistance of the police force was particularly important when it came to bringing the city to a standstill. Recalls Philip Wrestler, “We were allowed to park cars at crossing points and they were sufficient to stop the traffic and bring the Italians to boiling point. You could hear the horns honking miles away. It was a good thing we had the police on our side and that they didn’t see the camera or I think they might have lynched us!”
Agnelli’s generosity was also warmly appreciated by Michael Caine. “Despite the fact that our Minis were in direct competi6tion with his Fiats, he let us film a chase on the test track on top of the Fiat Factory.” In return for his kindness, the production actually discussed replacing the Minis with Fiats. But no matter BMC’s indifference, The Italian Job simply wouldn’t work with another vehicle, just as Steve McQueen’s motorcycle stunts in The Great Escape would’ve been less impressive had they been completed on a moped."
Happy to let the production race their cars through piazzas and plazas, the only thing Gianni Agnelli couldn’t provide was a sewer. And so for just one sequence the entire film had to relocate.. to sunny Coventry!