My Romance with Movies: From the 1950s: The Snows of Kilimanjaro

1952 Drama

From 20th Century Fox

Directed by Henry King

Starring

Gregory Peck

Susan Hayward

Ava Gardner

Hildegard Knef

Leo G. Carroll

Torin Thatcher

Ava Norring

Helene Stanley

Marcel Dalio

Richard Allan

Darryl F. Zanuck, as you know from many postings, was the head of production at 20th Century Fox through most of Hollywood's Golden Age. As such he was the guy ultimately responsible for its product but once in a while a story really grabbed him to such an extent that he personally produced the film version. One of those projects was The Snows of Kilimanjaro written by his friend Ernest Hemingway.

Technically they were uneasy friends because Zanuck frequently annoyed the hell out of the author who also annoyed the hell out of a lot of people. They had many similarities. Both were macho men to a fault, womanizers and didn't live easily in the world unless they were in charge.

Both liked the hunting and killing of animals and both had walls ablaze with trophies. They shared a love of war and danger, bullfights and Spain, Paris and Africa. Hemingway was always in need of money (not something he had in common with Zanuck) and as a result he sold the rights to his works to movie studios over the years. He was almost never satisfied with the results.

And surely that couldn't have surprised him so much. How is a 29-page short story going to be turned into a 2-hour movie epic without a lot of padding? What screenwriter Casey Robinson did was to take pieces of other Hemingway books and weave them into his work here. Ava Gardner, for one, was thankful for the expansion since her character is fleeting in Hemingway's original work.

Since it was a project personally produced by Zanuck, he hired some talented folks to help him out. In addition to the highly-talented screenwriter, there was Henry King, with 30 years as Fox's most reliable director and the one who helmed most of the studio's biggest hits. Pros Bernard Herrmann handled the music and Leon Shamroy the Technicolor cameras.

Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward were Fox employees and more or less did what they were told. They were the stars of David and Bathsheba the year before, again with King directing, and it was a big hit. Not coincidentally both had just received acclaim as world favorite actor and actress.

Gardner & Peck in a popular scene

Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai 'Ngaje Ngai,' the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude. That statement opens the film and the book but in the latter it is shown and explained while not so in the film.

The story concerns Peck, a successful writer who reviews his apparently unsatisfactory life as he lies dying below the great mountain. He has a large gash on his leg and is cared for and loved by his second wife, Hayward. Stretched out on a cot, fading in and out of sleep, he observes that dying a failure leaves a bad taste in your mouth and complains that I've lived, all right, but where has it gotten me?

He reminisces about his life as flashbacks show his various loves. I think Robinson's padding of the story to the extent that he shows brief glimpses into his affairs with several women was a mistake. Most were so brief and who cared? We learned little from it. Peck's relationship with his first wife, Gardner, is the only one of the past ones that matters or is interesting. She is the one who got away, the one who mattered most.

Peck, Hayward filmed it all right here

After they marry Peck finally sees some success with his writing and their lives change to the extent that success and money accomplish that. They go on a first trip to Africa and a safari bewitches him. She is upset at his wanderlust and also his bloodlust in killing animals. She also has a secret. She's pregnant.

She can't bring herself to tell him about the pregnancy because she's certain he won't approve. She throws herself down a flight of stairs which settles the pregnancy matter. He is upset when he hears the news and begins wandering more and more. They divorce because she wants home and hearth.

He marries Hayward whom he mistakes for Gardner on a city street. He doesn't see the latter for a decade. When they see one another again, they've both joined the fighting in the Spanish Civil War. He is an ambulance driver (of course). Neither knows the other one is in the war. As she lies pinned under an overturned vehicle, she calls out for him and he miraculously appears. What hokum! I thought Robinson was a good writer. I believe it would have been a better film had the writer opened up Peck's life with both Gardner and Hayward. All three characters could have been more fully developed.

It's presumed that Hemingway thought so, too. When he saw the film (Zanuck had taken a copy of it to Spain) he was so grossed out that he left the projection room in a noisy huff. The Snows of Zanuck, he yelled, by Z. A. Nuck. He was especially miffed that so much material was used from his previous works.

The feisty Hayward got on well with Peck

Gardner is the main female lead and came away with the best notices. She thought it was her best role to date. I didn't. It did set her on the path for starring roles in big movies. It seemed most everyone started paying attention to her. She became the ideal Hemingway heroine... she was his favorite actress and the bawdy, boozing, argumentative, foul-mouthed, sexy, strong woman she was he cherished. They would remain lifelong friends. She had previously sensationally appeared in a Hemingway work, 1946's The Killers and would again in 1957 with The Sun Also Rises.

What problems she did have while making Snows were caused by husband Frank Sinatra. Their marriage was not going well and he at first said she couldn't do the film because he needed her by his side for some upcoming travel. She said her role was small and shouldn't take more than 10 days and on that basis he said ok. When she was still shooting on the 11th day he popped over to Fox and made his unhappiness known to several.

The author with his favorite actress

Gardner would also become lifelong friends with Peck. They had already appeared in 1949's unsuccessful The Great Sinner and would go to appear in their biggest success, 1959's On The Beach. After her death Peck would include her housekeeper and dog in his household.

I loathe not falling all over myself lauding a Peck performance but there were better choices for this lead performance. I suspect he thought so, too, because he was nervous accepting the role. In 1947 he had starred in The Macomber Affair, based on a Hemingway work, and he didn't think he pulled it off (nor did critics) and the film was not a success. He dreaded it happening again. Oddly, perhaps, I thought his future costar and occasional nemesis, Robert Mitchum, would have been better in the part.

He was his best playing heroic types, strong, stalwart, respected, justice-seekers. That big voice suggesting a quiet authority was all I ever needed. I was leery when he did a comedy, such as Designing Woman, 1957, but I didn't think he was so bad. I never particularly enjoyed him as a bad guy and smartly, he rarely played them. While his character here is not an out and out baddie, he is selfish and shallow (he certainly treats Hayward poorly) and not particularly easy to warm up to. I saw a Peck who was stiff and uncomfortable.

I suspect that Fox didn't particularly care because one thing he and Hayward were good at was drawing in the customers. (You'll recall both had recently been voted world favorites.) Hayward, billed above Gardner, has little to do in what is essentially a nursemaid role. Known for kicking up a fuss, I can't imagine why she agreed to do it, especially after the success she'd been enjoying lately. I've always wished she and Gardner had shared a scene together but the storyline made that impossible.

King was an actor's director, obviously stemming from the fact that he had once been an actor. He seemed to let the story, editing, continuity and a few other things left to the pros. And that is too bad.

On a Fox soundstage with the cyclorama in background

Second unit photographers, director and a few others went to Tanzania, Kenya, Paris, Cairo, Madrid and the French Riviera to film scenes. One cannot deny they did a highly-polished job because The Snows of Kilimanjaro is known for its handsome mounting. But neither King nor any of his actors left the 20th Century Fox lot. The studio's massive Stage 8 (which one day I would sneak into) was turned into the massive African hunting camp with a 350x44 cyclorama of Kilimanjaro in the background. The Spanish Civil War was filmed on the backlot and even the bullfight was lifted from a previous Fox opus, Blood and Sand. So while the second-unit photography is indeed handsome, it is poorly woven into the studio-filmed parts and it looks it.

At the time of its release critics raved for the most part and movie seats were filled for some time. While I went to see it because of the three stars-- all favorites of mine-- and Africa, I came to see the film as fragile, uneven and clumsily assembled. Its soap opera overtones just don't stand up over time. Still, I enjoyed it for the same reason I saw it in the first place. Fox allowed it to slip into the public domain which shows that at least over the years, they lost faith in it.

Here's the trailer: