Elephant Walk (1954)

Director:

William Dieterle

Writers:

John Lee Mahin (writer)
Robert Standish (novel)

Release Date:

21 April 1954 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | Romance

Tagline:

One man claimed the land. Two men claimed the woman who lived there.

Plot:

The young bride of a rich planter finds herself the only white woman at Elephant Walk tea plantation, British Ceylon.

Plot Keywords:

Elephant | Plantation | Ceylon | Tea | Cholera

Cast

Elizabeth Taylor	...	Ruth Wiley
Dana Andrews	...	Dick Carver
Peter Finch	...	John Wiley
Abraham Sofaer	...	Appuhamy
Abner Biberman	...	Dr. Pereira
Noel Drayton	...	Planter Atkinson
Rosalind Ivan	...	Mrs. Lakin
Barry Bernard	...	Planter Strawson
Philip Tonge	...	Planter John Ralph
Edward Ashley	...	Planter Gordon Gregory
Leo Britt	...	Planter Chisholm
My Lee Haulani	...	Rayna (as Mylee Haulani)
Jack Raine	...	Norbert
Victor Millan	...	Koru (servant)
Henry Carr
William Benegal Rau
Eddie Das
Jiva Raj De Alwis
Reginald Lal Singh	...	Servant
Charles Heard	...	Planter
Norma Varden	...	Woman in shop
Rodd Redwing	...	Servant
Carlos Rivero	...	Tomas (chauffeur)
Adolfo Ornelas
Delmar Costello	...	Native patient
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Madhyma Lanka Nritya Mandala Dancers	...	Dancers
Satini Pualoa	...	Foreman
Leslie Sketchley	...	Planter

Directed by
William Dieterle

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
John Lee Mahin		writer
Robert Standish		novel

Produced by
Irving Asher	....	producer

Original Music by
Franz Waxman

Cinematography by
Loyal Griggs

Film Editing by
George Tomasini

Art Direction by
J. McMillan Johnson
Hal Pereira

Set Decoration by
Sam Comer
Grace Gregory

Costume Design by
Edith Head

Makeup Department
Wally Westmore	....	makeup artist

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Francisco Day	....	assistant director
Alvin Ganzer	....	second unit director

Art Department
Gene Lauritzen	....	construction coordinator (uncredited)

Sound Department
John Cope	....	sound
Gene Merritt	....	sound

Visual Effects by
Farciot Edouart	....	process photography
John P. Fulton	....	special photographic effects
W. Wallace Kelley	....	process photography
Paul K. Lerpae	....	special photographic effects

Stunts
Evelyn Finley	....	stunts (uncredited)

Camera and Electrical Department
Irmin Roberts	....	director of photography: second unit

Other crew
Ram Gopal	....	choreographer
Richard Mueller	....	technicolor color consultant

Production Companies

• Paramount Pictures

Distributors

• Paramount Pictures (1954) (USA) (theatrical)
• National Broadcasting Company (NBC) (1964) (USA) (TV) (original airing)
• Paramount Home Video (1991) (USA) (VHS)
• Paramount Home Entertainment (2005) (Netherlands) (DVD)
• Paramount Home Video (2005) (USA) (DVD)
• CIC Vídeo (????) (Brazil) (VHS)

Other Companies

• Madhyma Lanka Nritya Mandala Dancers  group cast

Runtime:

103 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

UK:U | Australia:G | South Korea:12 | Finland:K-16 | USA:Approved (PCA #16612) | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Iverson Ranch, Chatsworth, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

Vivien Leigh was originally cast. Her mental illness begun affecting things during filming, and so she was replaced by Elizabeth Taylor. Many long shots and shots from behind are still of Leigh.

Goofs:

Continuity: At the beginning of the film, John Wiley (Peter Finch) does a voiceover reading of a page from "The Diary of Elephant Walk", shown on screen. Near the bottom of the page, Wiley (Finch), reading it aloud, says, "It was pouring with rain," even though the text seen on the screen reads "It was pouring rain." (In fact, as an Englishman, Wiley would normally have said - and written - "pouring with rain". "Pouring rain" is the American usage.)

Movie Connections:

Featured in Edith Head: The Paramount Years (2002) (V)

Soundtrack:

Many Dreams Ago

Us versus Them, writ large

At first glance, ELEPHANT WALK is a saga of the wicked decadent rich. That's the angle all the reviewers here have discussed. Something like the TV show DALLAS, maybe, if a lot more imaginative.

But the more interesting aspect is that it's a parable about (**SPOILER, SPOILER!**) nature taking back her own. Y'see, the lovably decadent and endearingly hateful characters in this film are paying an ancestral debt for the originally sinful act whereby the previous generation's patriarch simply HAD, in his hubris, to build his equivalent of "Tara" right in the path of what had been the local elephants' right-of-way from time immemorial. Typical human behavior, I fear, but the fact is that elephants are just as territorial as we are, and if you cut off their right-of-way they will still retain the long memory for which they are so noted. Even if all they can do about it is gather in front of the land y'all stole, flap their ears and trunks at you, and trumpet their displeasure.

And while all this is going on, the Liz Taylor and Peter Finch characters are having the fancy marital problems which take up all the attention of IMDb reviewers. The reviewers' attention span is like that of the characters in the film, an attitude which is something like "who cares, they're nothing but a bunch of silly elephants". Indeed, one character says with a smirk, "the natives here believe elephants are people. They call them the Elephant People." Ridiculous idea, right?

Well, not exactly. One otherwise fine day, an epidemic ravages the Elephant Walk plantation, and as a result there are no native servants ("beaters", in the local jargon) there to drive them away for the white masters' benefit. In fact, to the Elephant People's delight (and mine, I must admit), NOBODY is there to answer their challenge, so they walk on in and reclaim their heritage. (No doubt they are at this time singing the elephantese translation of Woody Guthrie's: "As I was walking that ribbon of highway,/I saw a SIGN that said no tresPASSING,/But on the other side, it just said nothing./That side was made for you and me.") And the invaded mansion catches fire from a downed chandelier, burning to the ground. Because no humans are there to protect it.

No, I'm wrong. There's ONE human there, one old native who's been serving Master too long to know what's good for him and too old to be running around helping contain the epidemic. He does wave his arms and shout "Go back, Elephant People! Go back!", and the predictable pachydermal response is is "Yeah? Or what?" They trample him, of course. And praise the Lord, they destroy the mansion.

This has been long winded, but I really wanted everybody to pay attention to what this film is really about. The moral of this story is: There comes a moment, in the awful providence of God, when nature turns the tables on her rapists. A moment when you will realize, as the poet said, that "You'll never get rid of the boom-de-boom nomatter whatcha do." And when that happens, all the acting talent and the costumes and the lovable decadence in the world won't save the Taylor and Finch characters. Their sizzling love and hate affairs won't amount to a hill of beans.

If Tarzan existed, this would be his favorite movie.

O give me a home/where the elephants roam... But seriously, guys, I think this is a pretty good cautionary tale.