Trivia for
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) More at IMDbPro »

• Carl Foreman wrote the screenplay with Humphrey Bogart in mind for the role of Shears, but Columbia Studios head Harry Cohn refused to allow Bogart out of another project. Cary Grant then was briefly considered to star as Colonel Nicholson, but his flop in a serious role in Crisis (1950) concerned the producer, Sam Spiegel. The role was offered to Laurence Olivier who turned it down. Alec Guinness was the next choice.
  
  
• There are many rumors about the casting of the film, but most sources claim that Charles Laughton was the original choice of to play the role of Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). Laughton turned down the part as he did not know how to play it convincingly as he did not understand the motivations of the character. He said he only understood the character after seeing the completed film and Alec Guinness' performance as Colonel Nicholson.
  
  
• At one point, Sam Spiegel wanted Humphrey Bogart to star and Nicholas Ray to direct.
  
  
• Alec Guinness initially turned down the role of Colonel Nicholson, saying, "I can't imagine anyone wanting to watch a stiff-upper-lip British colonel for two and a half hours." He had also clashed with David Lean when they made Oliver Twist (1948).
  
  
• Howard Hawks was asked to direct, but declined. After the box-office failure of Land of the Pharaohs (1955), he didn't want a second one in a row, and he thought the critics would love this movie but the public would stay away. One particular concern was the all-male lead roles.
  
  
• Screenwriters Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman were on the blacklist of people with accused Communist ties at the time the film was made, and went uncredited. The sole writing credit, and therefore the Oscar for best adapted screenplay, went to Pierre Boulle, who wrote the original French novel but did not speak English. Clearly Pierre had not written the English script and this became a long-running controversy between the Academy and the actual authors to achieve recognition for their work. 1984 the Academy retrospectively awarded the Oscar to Wilson and Foreman. Sadly Wilson did not live to see this; Foreman died the day after it was announced. When the film was restored, their names were added to the credits.
  
  
• In some prints of this movie, star Alec Guinness's surname is written as "Guiness".
  
  
• Charles Laughton was announced as the star, but decided he couldn't handle the heat of Ceylon and withdrew. Among the actors considered as replacements were Ronald Colman, Noel Coward, 'Ralph Richardson', Ray Milland and James Mason.
  
  
• The bridge cost $250,000 to build; construction began before anyone had been cast.
  
  
• After the final scene was shot, producer Sam Spiegel shipped the film footage on five different planes to minimize the risk of loss.
  
  
• When this film was first aired on commercial TV in the USA, on Sunday night, Sept. 25, 1966, ABC-TV pre-empted its entire evening's schedule so the film could be aired in one night, as opposed to two parts on consecutive nights. This was considered a bold move at the time. It was the longest single network telecast of a film up to then (three hours and 10 minutes with commercials; Ford Motor Co. was the lone sponsor), beating the previous record set by Laurence Olivier's Richard III (1955), which was telecast by NBC over three hours on March 11, 1956. An estimated 60 million viewers watched the program.
  
  
• The title of the English translation of the French novel "Le pont de la rivière Kwai" was "The Bridge Over the River Kwai".
  
  
• It was Percy Herbert who suggested the idea of using Kenneth Alford's "Colonel Bogey March" to David Lean.
  
  
• The actual Major Saito, unlike the character portrayed in the film by Sessue Hayakawa, was said by some to be one of the most reasonable and humane of all of the Japanese officers, usually willing to negotiate with the POWs in return for their labor. Such was the respect between Saito and the real-life Lieutenant-Colonel Toosey that Toosey spoke up on Saito's behalf at the war-crimes tribunal after the war, saving him from the gallows. Ten years after Toosey's 1975 death, Saito made a pilgrimage to England to visit his grave.
  
  
• The film's story was loosely based on a true World War II incident, and the real-life character of Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey. One of a number of Allied POW's, Toosey was in charge of his men from late 1942 through May 1943 when they were ordered to build two Kwai River bridges in Burma (one of steel, one of wood), to help move Japanese supplies and troops from Bangkok to Rangoon. In reality, the actual bridge took 8 months to build (rather than two months), and they were actually used for two years, and were only destroyed two years after their construction - in late June 1945. The memoirs of the 'real' Colonel Nicholson were compiled into a 1991 book by Peter Davies entitled The Man Behind the Bridge.
  
  
• The real life construction of the bridge over the River Kwai used about 100,000 conscripted Asian laborers. 12,000 prisoners of war died on the project.
  
  
• John Ford, like Howard Hawks, was considered as a director before David Lean was chosen.
  
  
• Fred Zinnemann was another choice to direct; Sam Spiegel very much wanted him to take the job, due to his box-office clout, but Zinneman didn't understand the novel and declined. Orson Welles was reportedly approached to co-star and direct, but Welles, too, dropped out after reading the script. William Wyler was considered but never formally approached. Ultimately, Spiegel explained the decision to hire 'David Lean (I)' as being "In absence of anybody else."
  
  
• John Gielgud was the first choice to play Major Warden (played by Jack Hawkins in the film) but rejected the role, saying it was "anybody's part".
  
  
• Alec Guinness was always the first choice to play Colonel Nicholson, although he actually turned the part down when first offered it as he disliked the character and thought Pierre Boulle's original novel to be anti-British. Charles Laughton, James Mason, Ralph Richardson, Noel Coward and Anthony Quayle were all approached. It was only after Jack Hawkins had been cast in the part of Major Warden that Guinness reconsidered his position, largely at Hawkins' instigation.
  
  
• William Holden, then a major star, was brought into the project to provide "box office appeal" after Cary Grant turned down the role. He received $300,000 up front, and was guaranteed a 10% share of the profits, to be paid at the rate of $50,000 a year. This is one reason why Holden sued to stop the first American TV showing of the film in 1966, claiming it would hurt future box office receipts, on which he was dependent (The lawsuit was unsuccessful). Because the film made so much money, his shares eventually accumulated to the point where the studio was making more off the interest on the unpaid balance than Holden was paid per year. A settlement was reached where Holden was paid a lump sum, and any future payments were willed to a motion picture relief fund.
  
  
• David Lean initially wanted Nicholson's soldiers to enter the camp while singing "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball", a popular (during World War II) parody version of the "Colonel Bogey March" poking fun at Adolf Hitler and various other Nazi leaders. Sam Spiegel told him it was too vulgar, and the whistling-only version was used instead.
  
  
• Original novelist Pierre Boulle actually had been a prisoner of war in Thailand. His creation of Colonel Nicholson was an amalgam of his memories of various French officers who collaborated with his captors.
  
  
• Sessue Hayakawa edited his copy of the script to contain only his lines of dialog. This way, he remained oblivious to the real nature of his character's fate.
  
  
• For the scene when Colonel Nicholson emerges from the oven after several days confined there, Alec Guinness based his faltering walk on that of his son Matthew when he was recovering from polio. Guinness regarded this one tiny scene as some of the finest work he did throughout his entire career.
  
  
• At one point during filming, David Lean nearly drowned when he was swept away by a river current. Geoffrey Horne saved his life.
  
  
• Sam Spiegel bought the railroad train from the Ceylonese government. It had previously belonged to an Indian maharajah and had seen 65 years of active service. Spiegel had it refurbished completely and then had one mile of railway track laid for it.
  
  
• Sam Spiegel was en route from Paris to London when he bought the then much-talked about novel by Pierre Boulle out of curiosity. By the time he arrived in London, he had read the novel and decided what his next film was going to be. He immediately flew back to Paris for a meeting with a surprised Boulle who agreed to sell him the film rights.
  
  
• Producer 'Sam Spiegel (I)' - in his efforts for securing rights, casting, locations, etc. - flew around the world 4 times in the 3 years it took to get the film from page to screen.
  
  
• For one sunset scene, David Lean specifically traveled 150 miles to capture it.
  
  
• Assistant director John Kerrison was killed in a car crash on the way to one of the locations. A make-up man was badly injured in the same accident.
  
  
• The Suez crisis of 1956 badly affected production too. Vital equipment that would normally have been shipped through the canal had to be flown out to the location instead.
  
  
• There were no facilities on the island of Ceylon to process film rushes so the day's filming had to be flown to London to be processed and then flown back out to Ceylon.
  
  
• For the scenes where William Holden, Jack Hawkins, Geoffrey Horne and the native girls had to wade through swamps, they were wading through specially created ones. The real swamps in Ceylon were deemed to be too dangerous. Nevertheless the leeches in the recreated swamps were real.
  
  
• Calder Willingham also worked on the script although he and David Lean didn't get on.
  
  
• The film was edited in Paris as David Lean was facing punitive divorce costs from the dissolution of his marriage to Ann Todd at the time in his native England.
  
  
• Ian Watts, longtime professor of English at Stanford, and author of the landmark "The Rise of the Novel", was a prisoner in the camp, helped with the construction of the bridge, and served as an advisor during the making of the film.
  
  

• SPOILER: While the bridge in the story was constructed by prisoners in two months, the actual one built in Ceylon by a British company for the filming (425 feet long and 50 feet above the water) took eight months, with the use of 500 workers and 35 elephants. It was demolished in a matter of seconds, and the total cost was 85,000 pounds (equivalent to about 1.2 million pounds in 2002).
  
  
• SPOILER: The train had a small diesel engine at the rear to make sure all four coaches went off the bridge after the steam locomotive.
  
  
• SPOILER: The train wrecked at the end of the film was purchased from an Indian maharajah for just that purpose.
  
  
• SPOILER: The destruction of the bridge as depicted in the film is entirely fictional. In reality, two bridges were built, a temporary wooden one and a permanent steel and concrete one a few months later. Both bridges were used for two years until they were destroyed by Allied aerial bombings. The steel bridge was repaired and is still in use today.
  
  
• SPOILER: On the first take of the final bridge sequence, the explosions on the bridge didn't detonate. The train crossed over safely, only to crash down a hill on the other side.
  
  
• SPOILER: After filming was completed on the exploding bridge sequence, which cost an enormous amount of money and time, rumor has it that the footage disappeared somewhere between Ceylon and London. It was finally discovered two weeks later, sitting in the intense heat out on the runway at the airport in Cairo, Egypt. Miraculously, the footage was undamaged.
  
  
• SPOILER: Alec Guinness never saw the bridge blow. He had completed all his scenes and returned to England when the explosion was filmed.
  
  
• SPOILER: After the bridge was blown, souvenir hunters swarmed all over the set, claiming pieces of timber.
  
  

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