Trivia / The Sand Pebbles

• Completely Different Title: Known in French as "La canonnière du Yang-Tse" ("the Yangtze gunboat").
• Fake American: The American Frenchy is played by the English Richard Attenborough.
• Fake Nationality: Marayat Andriane (Thai-French) and Mako (Japanese-American) play Chinese characters.
• He Also Did: Marayat Andriane (Maily) is mainly known under the pen-name of "Emmanuelle Marsan", as the writer of a series of erotic novels.
• Hostility on the Set: Steve McQueen gave writer Robert Anderson such a hard time, that Anderson left the project after McQueen was cast. Years earlier, McQueen was not cast in a play by Anderson and McQueen never forgave him.
• Star-Derailing Role: The film ended up being this for Steve McQueen despite its critical success, not because of its disappointing box office numbers but because his experience left him exhausted. He would not return to the screen again until 1968, when The Thomas Crown Affair and Bullitt were released.
• Troubled Production: The film encountered most of the usual hurdles inherent in filming an Epic Movie, and some unique ones besides.
  • Robert Wise wanted to adapt Richard McKenna's book soon after its publication. Despite the novel's success, Wise found that studios didn't think a film version had much box office potential; 20th Century Fox sat on the rights for several years, forcing Wise to pursue other projects while it languished in Development Hell. This actually worked out well for Wise, who made The Sound of Music for Fox before the studio finally gave Sand Pebbles the green light (partly because, after Music's success, Wise now had the clout to pick and choose his projects).
  • Most of the location shooting took place in Taiwan, which proved less-than-ideal for several reasons. Candice Bergen recalled that the film's "intricate shooting schedule...depending on weather, river tides and currents, was hourly subject to change." Wise and the crew were forced to reshoot scene after scene due to the inclement weather, remarking that it often took "four, five different calls to shoot different scenes, depending on the conditions. If the tide was out, we had to try to shoot things on the deck where you wouldn't see the water. If it was a good day and the wind was blowing from the bow, I had to shoot a certain set of scenes because the smoke would have to match." He also recalled spending an entire day getting shots of the San Pablo's flag flying in the breeze because the weather made it impossible to shoot anything more elaborate.
  • Wise planned to use the Tamsui River in northern Taiwan as a stand-in for the Yangtze. Unfortunately, it was a tidewater river which wasn't broad or deep enough for the film's purposes and was extremely susceptible to inclement weather and tidal shifts. While filming an early scene with Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough, a sudden swell caused by a shift in the tide capsized a fifteen foot camera boat, nearly drowning the crew and the actors. Indeed, Wise found that the tide regularly receded without warning, and it became nearly impossible to use the San Pablo (an expensive replica of an authentic turn-of-the-century gunboat) without it running aground in the shallows. Ultimately, Wise decided to re-shoot scenes of the San Pablo at sail in the ocean near Hong Kong, finding little of his Tamsui footage usable.
  • Filming in Taiwan during the Cold War posed its own difficulties. The Taiwanese government wasn't happy with the film's portrayal of Chiang Kai-shek (still the country's ruler) and the Kuomintang, but decided not to interfere with filming as they hoped it would increase tourism. However, Chiang did force Fox to build a government office building (at a cost $100,000) as a "gift" to their government, and his police forced cast and crew to restrict themselves to hotels and an American army base when they weren't filming (an edict which McQueen and Bergen flouted). Unruly Taiwanese extras complicated filming further; when another scene was ruined by monsoons, a crowd of extras literally rioted rather than film another take. And Taiwan's ongoing tensions with mainland China added an unnerving Reality Subtext to the movie; just a week before principal photography began, a skirmish between Nationalist and Red Chinese gunboats occurred in the Taiwan Strait, and the island remained on high military alert throughout filming. Wise was even forced to halt shooting one day when he discovered that he'd accidentally filmed a Taiwanese special forces team on maneuvers.
  • Steve McQueen, a difficult star on the best of shoots, didn't help either. McQueen's behavior on the set was strictly professional; he had a cordial relationship with Wise (although the two initially butted heads over McQueen's request to pare his character's dialogue, Wise ultimately agreed that it was the right call) and, unlike other films, he got along well with his cast members. His behavior off the set, however, was often anything but professional. McQueen was detained by customs upon arrival in Taipei for carrying a revolver in his luggage; he quickly grew restless in the face of the production's restrictions and often drove off on his motorcycle to explore the countryside without notifying cast, crew or government minders. Later he invited friends from the United States to join him in Taipei, and as production wore on they became increasingly onerous, spending the evenings drinking and carousing in the city and causing problems with local authorities. Finally, near the end of the shot McQueen developed a severe flu, then an abscess tooth and demanded that he return to Los Angeles for surgery, further delaying the shoot for several weeks.
  • Eventually it became too difficult to maintain production on Taiwan, and the production relocated to the relative comfort of Hong Kong soon afterwards. Shooting finally wrapped back in Los Angeles after eight-and-a-half months, the budget having ballooned from a projected $8 million to over $12 million. Wise would later call it "the most difficult film...I've ever made" and that Taiwan was "the most difficult location I've ever tackled," while McQueen was so exhausted by the shoot that he took a two-year break from acting.
• Wag the Director: Steve McQueen requested that the filmmakers trim his character's dialogue because he felt it fit Jake's loner personality better. Robert Wise resisted at first, but came to accept it when McQueen explained that it would allow Wise to focus on his staging and camerawork rather than the actors' performances, which Wise accepted as a complement.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Robert Wise's first choice to play Jake Holman was Paul Newman. Cliff Robertson was also considered.
  • Julie Christie turned down the role of Shirley Eckert.

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