inside us, as the film lasted four hours.
I assured him that only the first half was being shown, and he shook his head in admiration and said: “They don’t care, do they?”
Alex’s obituary was marginally nearer the truth when it said that a host of law suits had been brought against him by the actors, but that he had easily been able to settle out of the films’ profits. In fact, I was told that only four of the cast complained, and that a settlement was reached; if there were more than four, then I was misinformed.
What was never in doubt was that the profits would be substantial. We knew we had a hit when the Paris audience gave a great roar of delight as the end titles came up with a caption reading: “Soon – The Four Musketeers” over a montage of shots from the second half, and they realised that they were going to get a sequel, the same show all over again, only different – which is what the ideal sequel should be. Time magazine called the M3 “a truly terrific movie”, and this was confirmed when it was chosen as the Royal Command Film, with the Queen Mother attending the London premiere.
Kathy and I must have arrived early, for the only people in the reception room were Spike and Mrs Milligan, he visibly chafing at the wait ahead. “This,” he cried, “is living! Let’s go to Kettner’s.” We didn’t, and presently he cheered up and was soon autographing waiters’ jackets, to their immense delight. We stood in a great horseshoe to be presented to the Queen Mother, and the show was stolen spectacularly by Raquel Welch. I had met her for the first time at a press reception in the morning, and had been taken aback to be confronted by a small lady neatly attired in a sensible skirt and jacket and flat shoes, her hair severely dressed, who conversed soberly about the script; for the premiere she was transformed in a gown that appeared to have been sprayed on her, last in the presentation line and performing the most astonishing curtsey in the history of obeisance, sinking all the way down to floor level before the Queen Mother, and up again in one graceful movement. How that dress stood the strain, only her couturier knows.
It was a night to remember, but as usual my memories are fleeting: dancing with Kathy to the music of Joe Loss and almost colliding with Les Dawson; Milligan singing “Viva España!” Christopher Lee complacently indicating a rave review in one of the papers; Michael York smiling contentedly and pushing his hair back in a characteristic gesture; having dinner at a table with Frank Finlay, Mr and Mrs Simon Ward (whose London garden had been invaded by foxes), and Mrs Bertha Salkind, Alex’s wife. You will gather that I have an erratic memory, and am incurably star struck, and always will be. Who isn’t?
A year later the M4 did good box-office, but less than the M3, and the pundits were correspondingly less enthusiastic. It was certainly a darker film than the M3, largely because I had stuck to Dumas in Milady’s murder of D’Artagnan’s mistress, and the subsequent execution of Milady at the hands of the Musketeers. The sight of Faye Dunaway in a nun’s habit strangling Raquel Welch with a rosary was strong stuff after the knockabout cheerfulness of the first film; so was her beheading, and whereas in the M3 the fights had been mostly light-hearted affairs, the final duel of the M4, fought in a church, and ending with Michael York transfixing Christopher Lee against a Bible open on a lectern, was stark and grim beyond the norm for a swashbuckler.
For what it’s worth, I still like it better than the M3, because I do love to jolt an audience, or a reader, and the direction was Dick at his inspired best – I did not take seriously his remark after we’d watched the rough-cut on the little Moviola machine at Twickenham: “One of these days you’re going to have to tell me what this film is about.” He knew, all right, but it wasn’t a conventional costume melodrama by any means. I value it for Oliver Reed’s superb Athos, and the splendid playing of Faye Dunaway against him and Heston and Michael Gothard – the sequence in which Michael is turned from Milady’s Puritan jailer into her lover is one of the best in the two pictures; it did in a few minutes what took Dumas a few chapters, thanks to the expertise of Faye and Michael and Dick. But they were all terrific, and as I once wrote in another book, no screenwriter was ever so fortunate, or more grateful.
One interesting exercise arose from the splitting of the production into two films: I had to write a prologue to the M4, for the benefit of anyone who hadn’t seen the M3. This was done by having a Musketeer voice the prologue over clips from the end of the first film, and worked very well. What intrigued me was that I had to do two prologues, worded slightly differently, one spoken by Porthos (Frank Finlay) for British audiences, the other by Aramis (Richard Chamberlain) for the American market. Don’t ask me why this was necessary, or why it was thought advisable to have Jean-Pierre Cassel’s excellent King Louis dubbed by another actor. There is much about the movie business that I still don’t understand – and that includes such controversial things as percentages which you think are going to accrue, but don’t. I’m not complaining; I was incredibly lucky to be asked to write the M3 and the M4, and I’d have done them for nothing. Well, almost nothing.
Time magazine, like the other journals, was less rhapsodic about the M4, but still complimentary, reflecting that it would be nice to see D’Artagnan and Co. “just one more time.” I thought privately that two Musketeer movies were about as much as the market would bear at the moment, but that it would be fun to do Twenty Years After, Dumas’s sequel to the first book, one of these days – perhaps twenty years after. In fact, it was only fifteen years later that Pierre Spengler, who had been executive in charge of production on the first two films, suggested that we get together again and continue the saga with the Musketeers coming out of retirement to rescue King Charles I from Cromwell’s executioners and face the wrath of Milady’s vengeful offspring.
In the intervening years I had worked with Dick on Royal Flash, with Pierre on Superman, and with both on various other projects which (like so many productions) hadn’t got the length of photography. I was elated at the thought of reprising all the fun of the first movies, and the three of us had the kind of good script meetings that you get only with old friends.
There were two hurdles to get over at the start, the first being that this was Pierre’s production, the Salkinds weren’t involved, and we weren’t going to be able to use any footage from the M3 and M4, which would have been useful for scene-setting, though not vital. I fell back on the old stand-by beloved by scriptwriters and directors in pre-war days: an extended caption on the screen giving the historical background, which is never a happy device, plus a voice-over commentary from Michael York, which helped considerably.
The other problem was a blessing in disguise. Dumas having inconsiderately disposed of heroine and villainess in the first book, there is a decided shortage of interesting femininity in Twenty Years After. I solved this by turning Milady’s avenging son into a daughter, a blonde and beautiful seductress who would also be a dab hand with rapiers, explosives, and miniature crossbows. That done, Dumas’s main plot was straightforward, and needed only the usual cutting and embroidery.
It was fascinating to see the original cast in musketeer uniform again. Oliver Reed and Frank Finlay were showing grey, but Chamberlain was Chamberlain still, and Michael York looked so ridiculously young that a rumour arose suggesting that somewhere in an attic there was a Dorian Grey portrait of him showing the ageing process. Roy Kinnear was as portly a Planchet as ever, Christopher Lee stalked the screen as a formidable Rochefort, and Jean-Pierre Cassel ranted splendidly as Cyrano de Bergerac (with his own voice this time).
In addition to the old hands, Pierre had assembled a first-rate cast of newcomers to the musketeer canon: Bill Paterson was a fine lookalike King Charles and Alan Howard an imposing Cromwell, Kim Cattrall sneered and swaggered it up a storm as the lovely villainess, Philippe Noiret was an urbane, devious Cardinal Mazarin, and C. Thomas Howell a properly stiff-necked and explosive son of Athos. Bill Hobbs was again the fight arranger, and the production wouldn’t have been complete without Eddie Fowlie in charge of props. This was the team that set off for Spain with such high hopes.
It
