I’ve only recently become aware that Elliott Kastner, who produced my favorite film, Where Eagles Dare (1968), died of cancer at 80 on June 30; it’s a strange coincidence that he and the film’s co-star, Clint Eastwood, were born the same year. By another curious coincidence, I recently covered his three Philip Marlowe movies (see “Everybody Loves Raymond, Part II”): The Long Goodbye (1973), Farewell, My Lovely (1975), and The Big Sleep (1978). Born in New York City, Kastner worked primarily in England, where he died in London, and was the stepfather of actor Cary Elwes, who appeared in his films Yesterday’s Hero (1979), Oxford Blues (1984), and Never on Tuesday (1988).
During and shortly after my tenure as a publicist at Viking Penguin, I had the honor of working with Jeffery Deaver on several novels, two of which, A Maiden’s Grave and The Bone Collector, were subsequently filmed (the former as Dead Silence). Jeff was then working with Kastner on one or more projects that sadly never panned out, and being as good a friend as he was a writer—although I’m sorry to say we’ve lost contact—he very kindly arranged a luncheon. Kastner disappointed me by saying he never did interviews, which would have been an even bigger thrill, but entertained us with stories of how he had recruited Alistair MacLean on Richard Burton’s behalf to write Where Eagles Dare.
It’s a common but understandable misconception that Eagles was based on MacLean’s 1967 bestseller, when in fact the story was first conceived as a screenplay and only then turned into a novel, which was published before the film was released. It turned out to be Kastner’s first of four MacLean outings, followed by the now-elusive When Eight Bells Toll (1971); Fear Is the Key (1972), which marked Ben Kingsley’s film debut; and the Charles Bronson vehicle Breakheart Pass (1975). All but Fear Is the Key were adapted by the author himself, and along with the non-Kastner Puppet on a Chain (1971) marked the only entries in the MacLean filmography on which he received screenwriting credit.
I don’t claim to be an expert on Kastner’s career, especially his later work, but he had a number of noteworthy films in his oeuvre, including his first, Bus Riley’s Back in Town (1965), a drama penned by esteemed playwright William Inge. Jack Smight’s Harper (1966) followed, with Paul Newman as the renamed private eye from Ross Macdonald’s first Lew Archer novel, The Moving Target, although Kastner was not involved with Stuart Rosenberg’s belated sequel, The Drowning Pool (1975). Following Smight’s crime caper Kaleidoscope (1966), he made a Peter Sellers comedy, The Bobo (1967), and his first film with Eagles director Brian G. Hutton, the drug thriller Sol Madrid (1968).
Clearly fond of continuity as well as literary properties, Kastner hired Hutton to direct X, Y and Zee (1972) and, after Roman Polanski was forced to flee the country, the Lawrence Sanders adaptation The First Deadly Sin (1980), featuring Frank Sinatra. He also made multiple films with Marlon Brando, who starred in the kidnapping thriller The Night of the Following Day (1968); Michael Winner’s The Nightcomers (1971), a bizarre prequel to Henry James’s oft-filmed “The Turn of the Screw”; and opposite Jack Nicholson in Arthur Penn’s offbeat Western The Missouri Breaks (1976). Winner also directed The Big Sleep and Alan Ayckbourn’s comedy A Chorus of Disapproval (1988) for Kastner.
Kastner produced screen adaptations of works by Vladimir Nabokov (Tony Richardson’s Laughter in the Dark, 1969), Iris Murdoch (A Severed Head, 1970), Donald E. Westlake (Cops and Robbers, 1973), Stephen Sondheim (A Little Night Music, 1977), Peter Shaffer (Sidney Lumet’s Equus, 1977, with Burton), Erich Segal (Man, Woman and Child, 1983), and Harper scenarist William Goldman (Heat, 1986), many of them scripted by their original authors. He also made the occasional genre film, e.g., Roddy McDowall’s sole directorial effort, The Devil’s Widow (1970); Alan Parker’s Angel Heart (1987); and the 1988 remake of The Blob (1958). But Where Eagles Dare was probably his biggest box-office success.
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