Eddie Fowlie, who has died aged 89, was David Lean’s right-hand man and “dedicated maniac” on many of the director’s epic films, among them Doctor Zhivago (1965) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962).
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The Ice Palace in 'Dr Zhivago', which was filmed in Spain: 'The snow isn?t real,' Fowlie said. ' It?s white marble dust' Photo: KOBAL COLLECTION His roles ranged from property master and locations scout to special effects coordinator. Most famously, perhaps, he created the ice palace in Doctor Zhivago, covering miles of Spanish countryside in fake snow at the height of summer to create a wintry Siberian landscape.
For Lawrence of Arabia he created quicksand in the desert; by then he had blown up the bridge on the River Kwai for the film of the same name (1957), even driving the train that crashes into the river below in the picture’s final moments.
Fowlie would not work in a studio, and helped Lean to achieve the striking images on location for which his films were famous. For Lawrence of Arabia, for example, he turned the Andalusian fishing village of Carboneras in Spain into the coastal town of Aqaba. But Fowlie always insisted that if audiences could detect such manipulation, he had fallen short.
“If you know it’s a special effect, it’s failed,” he said. “Doctor Zhivago was shot in Spain. All of it. The snow isn’t real, I came up with that. It’s white marble dust. Thousands of tons of the stuff. It was surprisingly cheap. With Doctor Zhivago, the whole film is a special effect.”
A tall, powerfully-built man with beetling eyebrows, Fowlie occasionally stood in as a body double. He was particularly proud of having doubled – clad in a bikini – for a young Joan Collins in underwater scenes of Our Girl Friday (1953). As an effects man he also realised the gory spectacle of John Lennon (playing Private Gripweed) examining his own innards after being disembowelled by an enemy mortar in Richard Lester’s How I Won The War (1967).
Fowlie worked on three further films with Lester: The Three Musketeers (1973), Royal Flash (1975) and Robin and Marian (1976). In The Three Musketeers, Fowlie took against the star Oliver Reed when he criticised one of Fowlie’s swords, saying it was not properly balanced. Fowlie took it away, reappeared moments later and handed Reed the same sword – which the actor pronounced to be much better.
Famously irascible, bloody-minded and rude, Fowlie was often involved in confrontations with the all-powerful screen unions. He himself never joined a union, and consequently seldom worked in Britain. He was singularly unimpressed by reputations, and turned down an offer to work with the director Stanley Kubrick, knowing that Kubrick was unpopular with his crews.
Nor was he overawed by Hollywood’s biggest stars, an approach he made abundantly clear to Robert Mitchum. Mitchum’s response was to urinate over Fowlie as he tried to set some dynamite around the actor’s feet for an effect in Ryan’s Daughter (1970).
Edward George Fowlie was born on August 8 1921 and brought up at Teddington, Middlesex. His first job was building biplanes at the local Hawker aircraft factory, but the work was not to his liking and he served in the Scots Guards for 18 months during the Second World War before being invalided out with an injured leg.
In hospital, pondering what to do with his life, he chatted to a soldier in the next bed who had worked in a film studio before the war. On his discharge Fowlie landed a job as a set dresser in the props department at the Warner Bros studio at Teddington, and worked on his first film, Captain Horatio Hornblower, RN (1951), starring Gregory Peck.
He started to specialise in special effects and explosives and, in 1956, on the set of The Bridge on the River Kwai, struck up a friendship with Lean, which lasted until the director’s death in 1991. Lean was immediately impressed by Fowlie’s can-do approach – the fact that he would hack back bits of jungle to clear the way for the camera, or fix foliage where none existed before if it was needed for a shot. In short, he was an all-round “Mr Fixit”. Lean said Fowlie numbered among his “dedicated maniacs”.
“Fowlie sorted out misunderstandings,” wrote Kevin Brownlow in his biography of David Lean in 1996. “[He] put pressure on recalcitrant members of the crew, did stunts when stunt men proved reluctant, and when David was sunk in gloom he was able, by a sort of sixth sense, to put into words what was bothering him.”
In the late 1970s, when Fowlie and Lean were scouting locations in Tahiti for a remake of the film Mutiny on the Bounty, Fowlie stumbled on the whereabouts of an anchor which had belonged to Captain Cook, and managed to have it raised and brought ashore. Lean made a television film about the discovery, Lost and Found: The Story of Cook’s Anchor (1979).
Fowlie retired to Spain, where he built and ran a hotel. With the journalist Richard Torné he recently completed his autobiography, David Lean’s Dedicated Maniac (2010).
Having filled no fewer than five different roles during the making of Doctor Zhivago, Fowlie was asked by the MGM studio which single on-screen credit he would prefer. Typically he replied that he could not care less as long as he was paid, so the studio cited him for special effects, believing that he stood a good chance of being nominated for an Oscar. Fowlie always maintained that he missed out because his effects, including the marble snow, were so realistic that no one imagined they were not real.
Eddie Fowlie, who died on January 22, is survived by his third wife, Kathleen, and by two daughters from his first marriage.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/film-obituaries/8341501/Eddie-Fowlie.html
Famously irascible, bloody-minded and rude, Fowlie was often involved in confrontations with the all-powerful screen unions. He himself never joined a union, and consequently seldom worked in Britain. He was singularly unimpressed by reputations, and turned down an offer to work with the director Stanley Kubrick, knowing that Kubrick was unpopular with his crews.
Nor was he overawed by Hollywood’s biggest stars, an approach he made abundantly clear to Robert Mitchum. Mitchum’s response was to urinate over Fowlie as he tried to set some dynamite around the actor’s feet for an effect in Ryan’s Daughter (1970).
Edward George Fowlie was born on August 8 1921 and brought up at Teddington, Middlesex. His first job was building biplanes at the local Hawker aircraft factory, but the work was not to his liking and he served in the Scots Guards for 18 months during the Second World War before being invalided out with an injured leg.
In hospital, pondering what to do with his life, he chatted to a soldier in the next bed who had worked in a film studio before the war. On his discharge Fowlie landed a job as a set dresser in the props department at the Warner Bros studio at Teddington, and worked on his first film, Captain Horatio Hornblower, RN (1951), starring Gregory Peck.
He started to specialise in special effects and explosives and, in 1956, on the set of The Bridge on the River Kwai, struck up a friendship with Lean, which lasted until the director’s death in 1991. Lean was immediately impressed by Fowlie’s can-do approach – the fact that he would hack back bits of jungle to clear the way for the camera, or fix foliage where none existed before if it was needed for a shot. In short, he was an all-round “Mr Fixit”. Lean said Fowlie numbered among his “dedicated maniacs”.
“Fowlie sorted out misunderstandings,” wrote Kevin Brownlow in his biography of David Lean in 1996. “[He] put pressure on recalcitrant members of the crew, did stunts when stunt men proved reluctant, and when David was sunk in gloom he was able, by a sort of sixth sense, to put into words what was bothering him.”
In the late 1970s, when Fowlie and Lean were scouting locations in Tahiti for a remake of the film Mutiny on the Bounty, Fowlie stumbled on the whereabouts of an anchor which had belonged to Captain Cook, and managed to have it raised and brought ashore. Lean made a television film about the discovery, Lost and Found: The Story of Cook’s Anchor (1979).
Fowlie retired to Spain, where he built and ran a hotel. With the journalist Richard Torné he recently completed his autobiography, David Lean’s Dedicated Maniac (2010).
Having filled no fewer than five different roles during the making of Doctor Zhivago, Fowlie was asked by the MGM studio which single on-screen credit he would prefer. Typically he replied that he could not care less as long as he was paid, so the studio cited him for special effects, believing that he stood a good chance of being nominated for an Oscar. Fowlie always maintained that he missed out because his effects, including the marble snow, were so realistic that no one imagined they were not real.
Eddie Fowlie, who died on January 22, is survived by his third wife, Kathleen, and by two daughters from his first marriage.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/film-obituaries/8341501/Eddie-Fowlie.html
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