Trivia / King Solomon's Mines

King Solomon's Mines (book)

• Golden Translator: The book was translated/reworked in Portuguese by eminent 19th-century Portuguese writer Eça de Queiroz. His translation has been itself translated into other languages.

King Solomon's Mines (1937 film)

• California Doubling: Aside from a few exteriors and establishing shots, the film was shot in England.
• The Cast Showoff: Paul Robeson, the baritone singer, plays Ignosi, and gets to sing a few songs.
• Creator Backlash: Charles Bennett, one of the writers, hated the idea of including a female character and took his name off the film.
• Fake Shemp: For the scenes shot on location in South Africa, doubles and stand-ins were used, as none of the lead actors travelled there for the shoot.
• Missing Episode: The film was thought lost for years until it randomly turned up in the Pinewood vault.

King Solomon's Mines (1950 film)

• Billing Displacement: Deborah Kerr is billed before Stewart Granger, who was unknown in the US at the time.
• California Doubling: Averted except for the desert scenes, which were filmed in New Mexico.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: An elephant stampede was filmed on location, but the footage was lost when the cast and crew had to abruptly flee the stampeding animals. It was recreated using trained elephants in Hollywood.
• Playing with Character Type: Deborah Kerr once again plays an English Rose...who has to undergo an Adrenaline Makeover to survive in the African jungle.
• Romance on the Set: Rumour had it that the sexual tension between Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr crossed over into real life too, with the two actors having an extra-marital affair.
• Star-Making Role: This got Stewart Granger noticed in Hollywood.
• Throw It In!: The majority of natives on-screen were locals who were "recruited on the spot".
• Wag the Director: Stewart Granger had the first director Compton Bennett sacked as they couldn't get along and the shooting was going nowhere. The next director Andrew Marton, being a man's man, hit it off instantly with Mr. Granger.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Errol Flynn was originally cast as Alan Quatermain, but turned it down, as he did not desire to sleep in a tent on location in Africa. Instead he did Kim (1950), which was filmed in India, but the accommodations for the actors were at a local resort.
  • Audiences at the initial screenings laughed their heads off at the scene in which Elizabeth Curtis (a Victorian Proper Lady) cuts her long hair off and it then cuts to her with a perfectly coiffed 1950s hairdo. Producers considered removing the scenes because of it, but couldn't find another way to explain Elizabeth's change of hairstyle.

King Solomon's Mines (1985 film, plus the 1987 sequel Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold)

• Cast Incest: In the sequel, Alan Quatermain's brother is played by Richard Chamberlain's romantic partner.
• Creator Backlash: Sharon Stone called the film "a bad hairdo running through the jungle" and had such a horrible time filming that she did Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol just to have some fun.
• Fake Nationality:
  • John Rhys-Davies (Welsh) plays a Turk and Herbert Lom (Hungarian) plays a German.
  • In the sequel, Americans James Earl Jones and Robert Donner as, respectively, a Zulu warrior and an Indian (or maybe Arab) mystic.
• Follow the Leader: Of the Indiana Jones franchise.
• Franchise Killer: The Cannon Group had originally planned a trilogy of films, the third film was to be an adaptation of She and Allan but this was ultimately abandoned after the extreme negative reception of Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, coupled with the financial difficulties of the company at the time.
• No Budget: Richard Chamberlain recalled being told that the budget was about $10 million. He joked that it was more like $3.75.
• Troubled Production: Both films were shot concurrently in 1985; filming took six months and was torturous. Sharon Stone proved so difficult to work with — as her marriage was falling apart at the time — that the rest of the crew played mean pranks on her. The budgets were very low (Cassandra Peterson, aka Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, had no stunt double for her character's demise in the second film) and the filmmakers were even worried that the shoot was cursed.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Sharon Stone was cast by mistake. Menahem Golan said "I want that Stone woman" - meaning Kathleen Turner, who had starred in Romancing the Stone.
  • John Hurt turned down the role of Allan Quatermain.
  • In 2011, a new sequel was proposed by Menahem Golan called Allan Quatermain and the Jewel of the East. The script was written by Menahem Golan and Richard Albiston, to be directed by Golan himself. The plot concerned Quatermain attempting to rescue his daughter from Chinese treasure hunters in the Congo. According to the 2015 documentary Golan: A Farewell to Mr. Cinema, Richard Chamberlain had agreed to return as the title character, but Golan died before the film began shooting.

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