Film Stories From The Book:
Hollywood of the Rockies
By: Frederic B. Wildfang
Around The World in Eighty Days
1956 — United Artists — produced by Michael Todd, written by James Poe, John Farrow, and S.J. Perelman (based on the novel by Jules Verne), directed by Michael Anderson and Kevin McClory, photography by Lionel Lindon, music by Victor Young, titles by Saul Bass, art directed by James W. Sullivan and Ken Adams, film edited by Gene Ruggiero and Paul Weatherwax — starring David Niven, Cantinflas, Robert Newton, Shirley Maclaine, Ronald Colman, Noel Coward, John Gielgud, Buster Keaton, Red Skelton, Harcourt Williams, and others
Academy Award Nominations: Direction and Art Direction
Academy Awards: Best Picture, Screenplay, Cinematography, Musical Score, and Film Editing
This film extravaganza begins on a bet: Phileas Fogg (David Niven), a Victorian gentleman of the highest pedigree, makes a wager with fellow members of his men’s club in London that he can circumnavigate the globe in just 80 days. Aided by his trusty and ingenious valet, Passerpartout (Cantinflas), he does just that — negotiating two oceans, five seas, and sixteen countries — via hot-air balloon, private yacht, elephant, steamship, and narrow-gauge railroad — all the way dogged by Inspector Fix (Robert Newton), who suspects Fogg of robbing the Bank of London of 55,000 pounds.
All along the way, Cantinflas (a Golden Globe winner for his performance as Passerpartout) nearly steals the show — Flamenco dancing, bullfighting, performing in the circus — all in the service of his master Phileas Fogg. During that part of the journey from San Francisco to New York, for instance (all of it shot here near Durango), Passerpartout creates a diversion by crawling atop a moving train to save Fogg and the other passengers from a band of attacking Indians. As the Durango Herald-News elaborates:
Cantiflas’ job here will be to crawl along the top of the narrow gauge train after Indians have killed the engineer and the fire-man, flop on his stomach when the train goes through a mock-up tunnel in the Rockwood cut on the Silverton line, and appear blackened with soot but safe on the other end of the tunnel.
As the filming progressed, the Indian attack itself, we are told, became more and more realistic:
Weapons were on the part of the homespun ‘passengers,’ several pistols; on the part of the Indians, hard rubber-tipped arrows and bows, rifles, axes, and tomahawks.
As the day wore on Indian superiority on the field of battle became obvious. From a source unknown to company officials, the Indians were drawing renewed strength which led them often to disregard instructions as to where to fire.
Arrows went through trains windows, some of which had already been broken by them, instead of above the cars and between the wheels. Finally the ‘passengers’ sticking their heads out of the windows to see how the ‘attack’ was doing were those brought here from Hollywood.
Guest ‘passengers’ not on the Todd payroll and therefore not insured against such attacks huddled at the end of the cars, protected by washrooms.
Interestingly, old engine number 315, now on exhibit down at Gateway Park, was employed in this scene. As reported in the Herald-News, the “315 snorts steam and smoke from a false boiler being installed in the city construction yard at Second Avenue and 15th Street.”
A special smoke-making apparatus is in the huge smoke stack. A steam-making apparatus squirts the water-laden air out in the proper places. Both will be in operation while the...diesel engine [being used by the D&RG in the yard], camouflaged to look like a box-car, does the work of pushing the train along the track.
At the end of this sequence, Passerpartout is thrown off the roof of the train and captured by the attacking Indians. As a result, the next time we see him is in a scene shot at the town of Arboles (“22 miles over dirt road after the paving stops just east of Ignacio”) — where he is being burned at the stake. Again, as reported by the Herald-News:
...the current location near Arboles...is something for the books!
The camp consists of 15 teepees, made and styled in Hollywood, a half dozen ultra-modern trailers, busses for hauling everybody back and forth, huge trucks which carry the endless paraphernalia required by such companies, and two engines and passenger cars of the railroad.... Lots of horses too.
The last scene filmed in the Durango area — the sailmobile scene — was shot at Hesperus, near the Canyon Motel, on a branch of the Rio Grande Southern Railroad no longer in existence. Producer Michael Todd engineered this scene himself.
‘One day he was driving a convertible north of town,’ said Durangoan Mel Flock who worked as a driver on the film. There was a large herd of sheep on the highway and Todd was inching his way ahead. He noticed how the sheep undulating around him resembled a seascape. He wanted to get that effect in a scene, so he told the cowboys to stop the sheep right there, and not to move them. The owner of the herd said he had to move the herd. It was blocking the highway. But Todd finally got the herd,’ Flock concluded. ‘And they shot the scene with them in La Plata Canyon.’
Flock’s colleague, Don Demarest, said that Todd actually leased another 3000 sheep for this scene — so that it would seem that the sailmobile was virtually sailing — hovering — over the herd.
Another example of Todd’s genius was the introduction of “cameo” parts in the movie — 44 cameo parts to be exact. Stars who came to Durango to take cameo parts included John Carradine, Buster Keaton, and Joe E. Brown.
Also the movie was photographed in the widescreen Todd-AO process — a process developed by Todd, himself, and the American Optical Co. — which creates the illusion of three-dimensional depth.
Although Around the World in Eighty Days was only Todd’s first movie (before that, he made a name in broadway theater) —
The film has long been considered a cinematic triumph due in part to its utilization of international location and shooting and its unprecedented use of nearly 69,000 actors and some 9,000 animals.
In fact, there were 68,894 persons photographed, 75,000 costumes (34,685 of them specially-designed), and seven make-up artists “to glue the right beards on 15,612 chins.”
Moreover, there were 252 shooting locations in 13 countries — including locations in Japan, England, France, Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, Siam, Mexico, Spain, Egypt, San Francisco — and Durango, Colorado.
