Editing Cy Endfield (section)

== Endfield's film work ==
The short period from 1949 to 1951 was one in which Endfield’s profile was on the rise. He directed ''The Underworld Story'' (1950), a crime story with social overtones (with Dan Duryea, Herbert Marshall and Howard da Silva), that was made for a subsidiary of Monogram Pictures. He followed this up with ''The Sound of Fury'' (1950), for the independent company Robert Stillman Productions (distributed by United Artists), at the end of the year. He described both films as ‘nervous A’ pictures, meaning that they had a budget of around $500,000. Their cost was beyond that of a B-picture, but still well short of that of ‘A’ pictures. This was a step up for directors such as Endfield, and followed in the tradition of the successful pictures associated with rising producer Stanley Kramer in the late forties, notably ''Champion'' (1949) and ''Home of the Brave'' (1949). Both the 1950 films, and particularly the second, came to be seen as film noirs, to use the term then being applied by critics to a series of American crime films that were released in France after the war.<sup>[i]</sup>

The success of ''The Underworld Story'' led to the effort by new producer Robert Stillman to set up ''The Sound of Fury'' (''Try and Get Me!''), based on a 1947 novel by Jo Pagano that dealt with a notorious kidnapping and lynching case of 1933. The events, in San Jose, had already loosely inspired Fritz Lang’s ''Fury'' (1935), with Spencer Tracy. Endfield put heart and soul into the project, which was filmed on location in Phoenix, Arizona, and which starred Lloyd Bridges, Frank Lovejoy, Katherine Ryan and Art Smith. There were disagreements over the script, but the story was a powerful one of a decent, family man (Lovejoy) whose desperation for work leads to an ill-fated, criminal alliance with a psychopath (Bridges). The climax, in which a mob invades a prison where the two criminals are being kept, had a particularly strong impact on critics.

Endfield arranged a private showing of ''The Sound of Fury'' for friends and associates. In the audience was the actor Joseph Cotten, who Endfield had got to know well at the Welles unit at RKO. The director recalled Cotten’s comment after the showing: ‘Cy, we’ve both grown up in the same country, but I’m telling you, the America you know is not the America that I know.’<sup>[ii]</sup> To the director this reaction indicated how such a film could be viewed in the febrile atmosphere of the Cold War. The critic Manny Farber also saw the film in these terms, describing it as ‘an ominous snarl at American life.’ Endfield talked to theatre managers who reported that some patrons had complained that the film was ‘un-American’, at a time when Americans were fighting and dying in Korea.<sup>[iii]</sup>

Early in his time in London Endfield worked without credit for the American producer Hannah Weinstein, directing three pilot episodes for a television series called ''Colonel March Investigates'', with Boris Karloff. His other films were directed anonymously, with another director – Charles de la Tour – often being credited, and being paid to stand by on set. This partly reflected then rules of the film industry union, the Association of Cinematograph Technicians (ACT), as well as the reluctance of American distributors to handle films that carried the names of those blacklisted. Such films included ''The Limping Man'' (1953) and ''Impulse'' (1955), while for ''The Master Plan'' (1955) Endfield was credited as Hugh Raker. The director’s credit for ''The Secret'' (1955), and ''Child in the House'' (1956) was C. Raker Endfield, although the latter film still saw la Tour standing by. There are some resonances of the blacklist experience in ''The Secret'' (with Sam Wanamaker) and in ''Child of the House'', the first of Endfield’s films with Stanley Baker.

''Hell Drivers'' (1957) was a breakthrough in terms of scale and ambition; it was successful in the UK and has attained a cult reputation. The subject, from a short story by John Kruse, concerned the trucking industry, and the short-haul transport of ballast, by a private company that stokes the ultra-competitive behaviour of its drivers. A publicity still of the time described it as a ‘drama of men who battle for their livelihood in ten-ton trucks.’<sup>[iv]</sup> Stanley Baker plays the driver (and ex-con) Tom Yately, while the strong cast includes Herbert Lom, Peggy Cummins, William Hartnell, and Wilfred Lawson, together with, in small but significant roles, emerging British actors Sean Connery and Patrick McGoohan.

Endfield wrote at the time of the rationale for the film, and for the Rank film that followed, ''Sea Fury'' (1958), seeing both as drawing inspiration from Hollywood dramas of working-class life. The ''Sunday Times'' review referred to ‘a pace and muscular command of violent action uncommon in British cinema,’ while another critic, referencing Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 film ''The Wages of Fear'' (''Le salaire de la peur''), wrote of ‘a British ''Wages of Fear''’. ''Sea Fury'' drew on similar aspects of the world of work, in this case following the efforts of men on salvage boats off the coast of Spain; the action sequences attracted particular critical attention.

Yet neither film was successful internationally, and in the late fifties Endfield become discouraged by the lack of opportunities in the industry. Several film projects collapsed, including adaptations of Evelyn Waugh’s ''Scoop'', and Mary Webb’s ''Precious Bane'', although he did direct ''Mysterious Island'' (1961), a studio project that successfully exploited Ray Harryhausen’s special effects to tell the Jules Verne story.<sup>[v]</sup>

For several years the director worked on commercials, while he and Baker engaged in a long struggle to make ''Zulu'' (1964), a recreation of the 1879 engagement between four thousand Zulu warriors and a small garrison of British soldiers at Rorke’s Drift, in southern Africa. With a script by John Prebble, Endfield and Baker (co-producers of the film) eventually achieved financing from Joseph Levine, as well as from Paramount. The resulting film was a huge success in Britain and has remained one of the most popular of British war films.<sup>[vi]</sup>

It was Endfield who took a chance on inexperienced 30-year-old actor Michael Caine to play (opposite Baker) one of the two British officers, and personally engaged the then Zulu chief, Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi to play Cetshwayo, the King of the Zulus at the time. Caine has long recalled that it took an American to give this working-class actor the chance to play a British officer role.<sup>[vii]</sup> His acting career never looked back. The resulting film uses the epic scenery of the Drakensberg Mountains and the Royal National Park, establishing the beleaguered colonial garrison and then elegantly depicting the hour-long battle. For all the lack of historical context, and developed characters on the Zulu side, the film avoids jingoism, and presents the British officers as having a final sense of self-disgust at their survival.<sup>[viii]</sup>

Despite this success, Endfield struggled in the following years, as American financing for British projects became scarcer. His last film as a director was ''Universal Soldier'' (1971), with George Lazenby, while he wrote the screenplay (with Anthony Storey) for ''Zulu Dawn'' (d. Douglas Hickox, 1979), and a novel with the same title (also 1979).<sup>[ix]</sup> The science fiction writer Brian Aldiss, who worked on several unrealised projects with the director, made his own comment: ‘I admired Cy. He never had another success like ''Zulu''. But then, how many people could have achieved the sheer organisation and artistry that went into the film?’<sup>[x]</sup>