Did you know there are actually three different endings to Where Eagles Dare? The most known is probably the one used in the movie. The movie ends when the camera zooms out from our heroes during their fly back to England, having accomplished their mission. They all seem very tired and the only one who does not fall asleep is Mary, who plasters Major Smith’s injured hand. Nothing of further interest happens, in contrast to the novel. The novel ends with a kiss between Lieutenant Schaffer and Heidi. If you have only seen the movie, this might be a surprise for you, as Schaffer and Heidi hardly see each other in the movie. In the novel, on the contrary, he can’t stop talking about Heidi from the moment he saw her. In the novel, the kiss is just the natural ending scene.
But in the movie we see no love between the two. Why? To answer that question we have to go to the third alternate ending of Where Eagles Dare, namely the one as written by the author Alistair MacLean in the original script.
Maclean was commissioned to write the original script by the New York producer Elliot Kastner. MacLean made up a script with a big wedding ceremony between Schaffer and Heidi in the ending scene. They got married! Kastner did not like this scene at all and assigned director Brian G. Hutton to rewrite the ending scene. Well, in fact not only the ending scene but the whole script! The script was to long, Kastner though – 240 pages. To avoid a too long film, Kastner and Hutton managed to cut down the script to only 100 pages. Anyway, the ending had to be rewritten. But they did not look very far to find that alternative ending; they copied the ending from another novel by MacLean.
In 1961 Maclean wrote the novel ”The Dark Crusader” (AKA ”The Black Shrike”). A novel about the special agent Bentall who, after completed his mission on the island Vardu in the Pacific Ocean, reveals that his boss, Colonel Raine, is a traitor. In the end, Bentall shoots his boss and make it look like suicide. Kastner and Hutton transformed this end to fit Where Eagles Dare. They changed Raine’s office to an airplane and switched Bentall for Major Smith and Colonel Raine for Colonel Turner. Instead of having Smith shoot Turner, they had Turner commit suicide. Appart from these differences, the ending scene of the movie ”Where Eagles Dare” is the same as that in ”The Dark Crusader”.
The scene when Heidi and Lieutenant Schaffer got married was actually shot, but, as you already now, not used. It’s now a very sought after piece for collectors, we are proud to offer it in our Where Eagles Shop. So imagine: one of the most high-pulse action movies could have had an end with a wedding! In that case it would have been two brittish military movie-marriages in 1969; Lieutenant Morris Schaffer in ”Where Eagles Dare” and Commander James Bond in ”On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”. Who do you think would have been the most beautiful bride: Heidi Schmidt or Countessa Teresa di Vicenzo?
