Genesis of the Mission

The origin of Where Eagles Dare lies in a chance encounter that reshaped two careers. In 1966, American producer Elliott Kastner was in London completing Kaleidoscope with Warren Beatty and Susannah York when he began searching for a large-scale adventure. Only thirty-eight, street-wise and ambitious, he had already turned a modest detective story, Harper, into a hit and now wanted “a caper film that would sweat,” as he later described it.

His idea was simple: combine American energy with British craftsmanship and a European author’s credibility.

That author became Alistair MacLean, the Scottish ex-naval officer whose novels The Guns of Navarone and Ice Station Zebra had sold millions. By the mid-sixties, however, MacLean had publicly retired from writing.

“I don’t fancy myself a writer,” he told journalists. “I’m a businessman now”.

He was running three failing hotels—including Cornwall’s Jamaica Inn—and wanted nothing to do with Hollywood.

When Kastner telephoned him in October 1966, the call went badly.

“He was awful on the phone—just nasty,” Kastner remembered. “He said, ‘I’m a busy man.’ I said, ‘I’m not very good on the telephone; I’d like to meet you.’ He said, ‘What for?’ I told him I wanted him to write an original for the screen. There was a pause, then he said, ‘No one ever asked me that before.’ ”

Intrigued, MacLean agreed to meet in Haslemere.

They talked for hours without agents or lawyers. Kastner offered $10 000 up-front, another $100 000 on delivery, and a 50–50 split of profits, while MacLean would retain full literary rights to turn the screenplay into a novel.

“I contributed nothing to the story,” Kastner said later. “I just asked for a wonderful, exciting caper set in the Second World War with four or five characters I could cast.”

By early 1967 MacLean delivered a 240-page script titled The Adler Schloss—“The Eagle Castle.” Kastner disliked the clumsy title. Remembering Shakespeare’s Richard III, he proposed the phrase “Where Eagles Dare to Perch”, soon shortened to Where Eagles Dare. It was the only creative contribution he ever claimed, but it proved decisive.

For MacLean, financially drained and disillusioned, the commission was a lifeline that drew him back into storytelling. For Kastner, it marked the start of a long collaboration that later produced When Eight Bells Toll and Fear Is the Key.

“Everything about Eagles began with one Scotsman who didn’t want to talk to me,” he laughed years later, “and one phone call that he finally answered.”