The Elephant to Hollywood - Michael Caine [30]
Perhaps I should also have asked the Guards for a bit of help with the horses. Riding lessons had been a bit hard to come by down at the Elephant but I’d told Cy Endfield confidently that I could ride. What I had omitted to mention was that I’d only actually done so twice and both times had been in Wimbledon. I’d booked lessons on the Common, but I only got as far as the High Street. I fell off the horse in front of a bus on the first day and I fell off the horse in front of a bicycle the second day (with far more damaging consequences), and I didn’t go back for the third. It wasn’t that I didn’t like horses – Lottie, the big old mare we’d had on the farm in Norfolk used to follow me round like a dog – but I’d never done much more than sit on her with my legs sticking straight out at the side. Through some equine sixth sense the brute of a horse I was sitting on for my first shot in Zulu seemed to know this and took an instant dislike to me. The feeling was mutual. We were filming a long shot of me coming back alone to the British military encampment after a hunting expedition and I was told to walk the horse back towards the camera slowly. It sounded simple enough, but the horse refused to budge. ‘Kick it up the backside!’ yelled Cy through the intercom and the prop man gave it a whack. The horse moved all right – just not forward. It reared up on its back legs and started prancing around with me clinging on for dear life. ‘Cut!’ Cy shouted. ‘You’re not auditioning for the fucking Spanish Riding School!’ The prop man calmed the horse down and we started off again, walking along a path down the side of the hill. All was going according to plan until we rounded a bend. The horse, by now as much of a nervous wreck as I was, must have caught sight of its own shadow on the hillside and with an ear-splitting whinny it leapt off the path and started hurtling towards a twenty-foot drop, with me yelling all the way. The prop man only just managed to catch up and grab the bridle and drag us both to a halt before we tipped over the edge. I’d really wrenched my back in the process and the prop man relayed this to Cy over the intercom. ‘Oh for God’s sake!’ I could hear Cy saying irritably. ‘We’ve got to get this shot today – the sun’s going down. Can you ride?’ he asked the prop man. The prop man could. And so my first appearance in my first ever major motion picture is in fact not me at all, but a prop man called Ginger in my hat and cape.
I was a bit aggrieved that no one seemed bothered about my back at the end of that day’s filming – or my knees, the following day, when the same horse, who had obviously really got it in for me, threw me into a pond. I brought this up with Stanley Baker. ‘Simple,’ he said. ‘You’ve only done two scenes and at this point we could replace you quite easily – almost more cheaply than we could replace the horse or your clothes.’ I opened my mouth to protest, but he went on, ‘The more shots you’re in, the more careful we’ll be about you – until the final scene when, once again, we won’t care a shit. A golden rule, Michael,’ he said, ‘never do a dangerous stunt on the last day of a picture.’ And I never have.
Things went more smoothly after that, but even so I was dreading the initial rushes. The film had to be sent to England to be processed so I had two weeks to get nervous about how my performance would come across on screen. The stakes were high; this was my big break. Eventually the big day came and I sat in the screening room surrounded by fellow-actors and cameramen and the other technicians from the set. The projectors whirred into action, the screen flickered and suddenly a huge face appeared and began to drone on in a ridiculously clipped British accent. I broke out in a sweat, my heart pounding. I wasn’t just bad – I was very bad. Career over, I thought. ‘Who told