Two-time Academy Award-winner William Goldman had to go all the way to Tanzania to discover an adventure that had its ultimate conclusion in his own back yard.
The acclaimed screenwriter and novelist, who grew up in Highland Park, found the inspiration for his new movie, “The Ghost and the Darkness,” in 1984, while on safari in Africa. But it wasn’t until he began researching the legend of the two rogue lions who stopped a railroad that he discovered the cats’ final resting place was in the Field Museum of Natural History.
Like almost everyone else who grew up in Chicago and made regular visits to the institution, Goldman probably walked by the diorama that contained the infamous animals a dozen times as a boy. If he had stopped to read the notes that described the incredible story of Col. J.H. Patterson and the man-eating lions of Tsavo, he might have come up with his screenplay much sooner.
“Isn’t it amazing?” he said, nursing a cold during an afternoon filled with interviews in the Four Seasons Hotel here. “I had no idea. . . . I remember saying to my wife, `They’re right there in Chicago . . . the lions!’
“One day, we flew into Chicago and took a taxi to the museum. There’s this big glass display with the lions looking at you. I swear to God, even today, there’s something spooky about them. It was shocking to me.”
As Goldman would discover, the lions’ tale is one of those yarns that’s stranger–and more exciting–than fiction.
In 1898, these same two “devil” lions inexplicably began attacking laborers constructing the Uganda Railway near the Kenyan city of Tsavo. Before the beasts’ nine-month reign of terror was over, 135 men were slaughtered and the progress of the monumental project was halted.
Patterson, an engineer, had to subdue the animals before construction could continue, and the British empire could expand its colonial reach. Nearly three decades later, in 1924, he would journey to Chicago to lecture on the incident.
The museum’s chairman of the board, Stanley Field, asked his friend if he knew what had become of the lions. Patterson told him they were serving as rugs in his home.
Field offered to purchase the bullet-riddled skins–and the cats’ skulls–for $5,000. The deal struck, taxidermist Julius Friesser was given the task of getting them in shape for display.
Seventy years later, the lions retain their ability to shock.
Undiscovered treasure
“It’s a very famous story over there,” explained Goldman, who wrote the screenplays for such films as “All the President’s Men,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “Marathon Man.” “My wife and I had been married for 27 years and it was our first trip to Africa. Sitting around after dinner, someone started talking about (the legend).
“I did something I’ve never done before or since: I turned to my wife and said, `That’s a movie.’ “
Indeed, it was. But it would take more than a decade for his dream to become reality.
“I planned to do some research, then come back to Africa after a couple of years for more research and write an original story,” he said. “But, the marriage ended and I didn’t go back. In 1989, I got a call from my agent who said Paramount was interested in the lion story.
“At that time, I had a very bad back and it was out. I had to meet with Paramount executives while I was lying on the floor, because I couldn’t sit. I remember saying that it should be a cross between `Jaws’ and `Lawrence of Arabia.’ “
What’s truly astounding, though, considering the dearth of really good ideas in Hollywood, is that it took so long for someone to exploit the legend. But, Goldman had been lucky before with undiscovered treasure.
“I’ve been writing for 40 years and I’ve come across two great true stories,” Goldman said. “One of them is Butch Cassidy and the other is the lions of Tsavo. The Butch Cassidy story had never been done before, either, and I wondered why.
“The reason I came up with was that they ran away. If they stood and fought like John Wayne did, you’d have had a million movies. There were only two real legends at that time in the old West: Jesse James, and there are a billion Jesse James movies, and Butch.”
Michael Douglas is an executive producer of “The Ghost and the Darkness.” He also portrays Remington, a composite of several wild-game hunters who existed at the time.
He, too, is somewhat baffled by the amount of time it took to bring the story to the screen.
“I started this new company, Constellation Films, which finances movies,” he said. “Steve Reuther and I began with no material, but our pictures are distributed through Paramount, so we went over there to see what they had in their pile. This script popped up.”
“It had been there six or eight years and I loved it. It hadn’t been made because of production problems, the lions being the major issue.” But, he added, with a familiar smirk, “I also thought there was a question of political correctness: How, in this age of `The Lion King,’ can you do a movie that’s `Jaws With Paws.’ “
“The Ghost and the Darkness”–with Val Kilmer portraying Col. Patterson–was shot in South Africa at an estimated cost of $50-60 million, and Paramount has mounted an extensive monthlong marketing campaign to get the message out.
Douglas, for one, is optimistic about the film’s prospects.
“It has all these great metaphors,” said Douglas. “To this day, no one can tell you why or what exactly happened.”
Lions hit their marks
Initially, the producers thought they might have to use robotic beasts to portray the man-eaters. But, according to Douglas, the veteran stunt lions (fully maned, although the originals were less-furry males) proved more than up to the task.
“The truth of the matter is that the animatronics let us down, so we ended up wasting a lot of money because the real lions did practically everything,” he said. “They were phenomenal. We had six of them, four that could work with actors and two that were vicious.
“We’d get the call, `Lion is on the set!,’ which meant that you’d stay very still and were quiet. I wish I had half the actors who hit their marks as well as these animals did.”
Lions, Goldman points out, just don’t behave the way his Ghost and Darkness lions did during their siege. Adult males don’t often hunt in pairs, nor do they stalk their prey as if murder was their sole intent.
Goldman agrees with Douglas that no one is likely ever to understand exactly what prompted the lions to act the way they did. Certainly, though, it’s possible to explain the incident as a symbol of nature saying to man: Enough!
“Personally, I think they were evil,” the writer said, “and, for whatever reason, evil popped out there for a while and started doing terrible things.”
