In 1970, I was a BBC television director and was sent to Spain to make a behind-the-scenes documentary about a feature film called The Horsemen. We had suggested that this might be “the last of the big pictures”, because the word from Hollywood was that the days of the epic were over, since the debacle of Cleopatra. Budgets were being trimmed, and period pieces discouraged. Columbia had put just $6m into this one.
The Horsemen was set in Afghanistan back in history, where the traditional sport of bushkazi had created a generation of skilled horse riders. Bushkazi is a sort of polo, with very few rules, where the sewn-up carcass of a goat is fought over by teams on horseback. The story was about Uraz, who wins a great white horse in the bushkazi tournament, but loses a leg to gangrene.
Omar Sharif played Uraz, although his exploits in the saddle were subcontracted to a stunt double, a Russian circus acrobat. We filmed an interview with the star, and, when it was over, he surprised me by asking if I could play bridge. “Will you make up a four?” We retired to Sharif’s trailer and played rubber bridge in a fug of cigar smoke. I partnered Sharif. We had agreed a Weak No Trump and Blackwood. It was one game all, no penalties, when the fourth assistant director summoned the star to the set, where he was needed for his close-up. The BBC crew went back to work, and the bridge game was never resumed.
I sent Sharif a thank you note which was delivered the following day by helicopter. We’d arranged to film aerial shots of the location in Aranjuez using a Spanish army helicopter, the cameraman hanging out of the open door. As a parting gift we thought it would be fun to offer the star a leg to replace the one that his character had lost in battle. So we created a false leg out of a pair of tights, stuffed with rags and paper and tied with ribbons. This was thrown out of the helicopter as we flew over the scene. I hope they got the joke.
