Jackboots For Goalposts: The Making Of Escape To Victory

Commissioned by James Brown and assembled with the assistance of the mighty John Wark and Soccer AM stalwart John Fendley.

The article originally appeared in Hotdog.

Note - I usually post these pieces as they were originally written. While this article in no exception, I should add that I now know why John Huston made Escape To Victory; it was to pay off his gambling debts!

John Huston has made better films than Escape To Victory - The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, The Man Who Would Be King, The African Queen, Fat City - but it's doubtful the writer/director/actor/producer/bullfighter/Mexican cavalry officer/prizefighter ever made a film that was as much fun as his soccer opus.

Indeed, if you were a lad in 1981, it was hard to imagine a more entertaining film. Pele, Michael Caine and Bobby Moore (your dad's twin idols), the FA Cup-winning Ipswich side, Rocky... it was only a year later with the release of John Landis' An American Werewolf In London that we released that a Jenny Agutter shower scene was the only thing that could have possibly improved Escape To Victory.

That the film still enjoys cult status can't be entirely attributed to schoolboy nostalgia, however. A more probable reason for the public's sustained affection is the film's relationship with the granddaddy of all POW movies, The Great Escape. The similarities between the two includes: all-star casts, similar looking Stalags, whistle-along theme tunes, the enemy 'just doing its job, oh yes, and an abundance of Allies spunk.

It's also worth noting that Huston respected Great Escape director John Sturges's belief that a film's supporting cast is almost more important than its stars, hence the appearance of respected British thesps Tim Pigott-Smith, Maurice Roeves and Daniel Massey among the Allied off-field staff, and Ingmar Bergman's actor-of-choice Max Von Sydow as the 'good' Nazi, Major Karl Von Steiner. And as the two films are inextricably connected in the nation's collective memory, it also explains why a link exists between The Great Escape and English football: a connection never more potent than in the moments after David Beckham swept home that free-kick against Greece and Old Trafford broke into a spontaneous rendition of Elmer Bernstein's stirring score.

The origins of Escape To Victory are unclear. The film doesn't receive a mention in Huston's autobiography, An Open Book (written while Victory was in production), but then he deals with five marriages in one sentence so you can hardly blame him for overlooking one of his lesser pictures. Also, since the script was suggested by an American (Jeff Maguire) but co-written by an Eastern European (Yabo Yablonsky), it's hard to pinpoint the inspiration.

It's possible that the idea for a team of Allied POWs taking on the full German side at the height of the Second World War was suggested by the celebrated WWI incident in which the British and Germans put their differences aside to have a kick about at Christmas. Or the time in 1938 when an England team, in Berlin for a friendly, gave the Hitler salute during the preliminaries.

Equally hard to appreciate is what drew Huston to the project. As John Wark (ex-Ipswich and Scotland) says: "He was a great man but no one knew what made him want to make a film about football. He certainly didn't know a lot about the game."

Wark believed that the opportunity to work with Michael Caine again might explain the director's enthusiasm. Having first crossed paths on The Man Who Would Be King, the director was delighted to be reteaming with the actor, who would play the Allies' skipper John Colby.

"He was the limey we wanted, smart and resourceful," said Huston while on-set. "What impressed me most was the way Michael improvised during two scenes. [One] was crucial to the film: it took place in the tunnel when the prisoners were discussing the possibility of escape. Michael rewrote the dialogue as the cameras were turning on him and what he actually said was far better than anyone could have written."

And Caine returned the compliment, saying, "If God has a voice, then he speaks with the voice of John Huston."

Like Huston, Caine is no stranger to dreadful films. Indeed, next to killer bee flick The Swarm and Jaws: The Revenge, Escape to Victory resembles All About Eve. But if money was the main reason for Caine taking the assignment, the chance to play football with some of the game's biggest names must have been something of a sweetener.

Since producer Freddie Fields wanted Victory to succeed internationally, he'd been certain to sign the one footballer even America had heard of. Winner of three World Cups and scorer of over 1,2000 goals, it was his spell with the New York Cosmos that secured Pele's reputation as a global phenomenon. On Escape To Victory, the former Edson Arantes do Nascimento was joined by Cosmos team-mate Werner Roth, England's World Cup winning captain Bobby Moore, Argentina's Osvaldo Ardiles (a World Cup winner in 1978), Belgium's Paul Van Himst, Ajax legend Co Prins and Poland's Kassie Deyna - such was Fields' determination to sell the film the world over, he packed his squad with stars from as many countries as possible.

Also taking to the pitch were most of Ipwsich Town FC, whose presence is best explained by John Wark: "Someone in the film industry knew our manager Bobby Robson. So one day, this person arrived at training and asked if anyone would be interested in making a film and a few of us put our hands up. Of course, we didn't realise how big a thing we were letting ourselves in for."

Besides internationals Wark and Russell Osman, reserve keeper Laurie Sivell travelled to Hungary, as did Eire's Kevin O'Callaghan, who suffered the twin indignities of having his name spelt incorrectly in the credits and having to play in goal even though he was a winger.

One player who couldn't make it over was Terry Butcher who explained: "I was under a bit of pressure to say no. I got married in January and had promised the wife a proper honeymoon. I had booked a holiday in Cyprus before the offer to be in the film came through, so it was a choice between meeting Pele or going away with the wife. There was only one winner, even though Pele is the greatest football player in the world!"

Certainly the chance to play with Pele was the man reason so many top professionals were willing to spend the summer of 1980 in pre-glasnost Budapest (Wark: "They shot in Hungary because the labour and the extras were so cheap. Even the game at the end, which was set at the Stade Colombes in Paris, was filmed at a Hungarian first division team's ground).

The Ipswich contingent were certainly pleased to take to the field with a real-life legend. "It wasn't enough that he was already a great player, he was a great man off the park," remembers Wark.

"Pele had been retired a few years but was still pretty fit," adds Russell Osman. "It was a terrific thrill to be involved in a game with him, even though it was only for a film. His control of the ball was mesmerising. Before each take he would perform a variety of tricks, back-heeling and so on, and all in those big army boots. I'm sure one of them was two sizes to big for Pele, but it made no difference."

And as for the Brazilian's famous overhead kick, the first time Huston shot it, Laurie Sivell somehow got a finger to the ball and turned it round the post. Escape To Victory's one truly iconic moment was nailed on the second take.

If they were awed about taking to the field with Pele, the pros weren't too impressed with Sylvester Stallone. Riding high on the back of Rocky II, Stallone's reasons for taking the movie were as ambiguous as Huston's. While it's hard to see what he had to gain from making a movie about a sport few Americans play and still fewer understand, Sly did at least win the respect of Ossie Ardiles: "It was very difficult for him but he did at least try."

With regard to his own Victory experiences, Ardiles remembers them with tongue firmly in cheek. "It was a very pleasurable month, playing football nearly every day. Of course, Pele and Bobby Moore had been retired four or five years by then, while I was in my prime, so I was much better than them. In fact, I carried them!"

While it was left to Huston to shoot the drama, Pele choreographed all the on-field action. According to Osman, "Pele would say, 'Give me the ball and try to kick me to make it as realistic as possible.' An then he would take on everyone and no one could get near enough to kick him! He made it look easy."

"You kept thinking," adds John Wark, "if that's what he's like after a while out of the game, I wouldn't have liked to face him at his peak."

Pele was also tasked with making Michael Caine look like an old pro. "Pele made me look good every now and then, just to show I was better than he was, because I was supposed to be a better guy than all of them. You get in some funny situations in movies..."

But while all the players enjoyed the great actor's company off the pitch, they were unstinting in the criticism of Michael Caine the footballer. "He was awful," laughs Ardiles. "He couldn't run 20 yards."

In fact, Caine was so ungainly that for the most part he was doubled by Ipswich defender Kevin Beattie and was particularly grateful for the advice he received from Pele and Bobby Moore: "Bobby's first tip was, 'Don't get in the other team's way otherwise they'll kill you!' And Pele showed me how to kick a ball properly."

In return, Caine gladly gave the players the full benefit of his acting experience. "Once I said to them 'Come on, don't worry about it, just fucking say the lines', everything went like clockwork. They were all very good with the dialogue, actually. And they were overawed by Sly and me for all of 10 minutes since there's no film-star nonsense about either of us."

Opinion was divided on the choice of Hungary as a location. Bobby Moore would tell his biographer Jeff Powell: "It was like being on tour with England, except that we could get out on the town, see the sights and get to know more of the place than just the hotel and the stadium."

Michael Caine, however, had no such enthusiasm. "It was a long location. I hadn't filmed in Budapest before but I had gone there for Elizabeth Taylor's birthday party for four days and I only remembered it in a sort of alcoholic haze. But when I got back there in the clear light of day, bloody hell! Communism depresses me more than a little bit."

Caine and Stallone made the most of their weekends off. "We used to get away together whenever we could," laughs Sir Michael. "We would race to the airport on Friday night waving our credit cards and shouting, 'When's the next plane out - to anywhere?!' Usually it was Paris or London. We'd go eating, drinking and falling down a lot."

Such jetsetting didn't make Stallone many friends among his co-stars, as Russell Osman recalls: "He would clear off after a couple of drinks, saying he'd had enough of Budapest and the next thing we'd heard was that he'd gone off to Paris or somewhere and filming had to be held up until he got back!"

"He was always surrounded by his minders and his assistants," Wark agrees. "He wasn't really part of the team."

Having pissed off the cast, there probably wasn't too much sympathy for Stallone when he broke three ribs stopping a drive for one of the Hungarians on the Nazi team. And what of the rumour that the over-confident Sly bet Pele $1,000 he could save half the great man's penalties in a shoot-out only for the actor to be completely humiliated? Says Wark, "I don't know whether that happened but I wouldn't be at all surprised. Stallone wasn't one of the best."

Wrapping in October 1980, Escape To Victory was released in Britain the following September. It didn't enjoy the success of Rocky or The Eagle Has Landed but it did debut at number four on the UK film charts, its assault on the number one spot scuppered by Indiana Jones (Raiders Of The Lost Ark), James Bond (For Your Eyes Only) and Sean Connery (Outland). It even hung around in the top five for a couple of weeks before being displaced, rather ironically, by John Carpenter's Escape From New York.

While the film enjoyed success in Europe and Australia, it proved as difficult to sell a film about football to America as it had been to sell the game itself. That the North American Soccer League folded barely a decade after its inception despite the presence of players such as Pele, George Best and Rodney Marsh might go some way to explaining why Victory didn't make it onto Variety's biggest-grossing lists.

With the ref having blown the final whistle, the Victory squad went their separate ways. Caine, of course, went on to win Oscars but his co-stars experienced mixed fortunes. While Pele became an international ambassador for 'the beautiful game', the Ipswich squad scooped the 1981 UEFA Cup (John Wark would enjoy European Cup glory when he moved to Liverpool).

Stallone, meanwhile, became the biggest star in the world over the next five years and a complete laughing stock in the five after that. There were also misfortunes for Ossie Ardiles, whose on-field success was followed by a disappointing career in management, and Bobby Moore who bid us farewell far too early in 1993.

Tragedy also befell John Huston, but not before he was able to knock out a few decent movies. And not until he'd once again demonstrated the sense of humour that allowed him to make a film as fun as Escape To Victory when he christened his last movie, made in the throes of emphysema, The Dead.