Writing the Screenplay

When Alistair MacLean began work on Where Eagles Dare in January 1967, he had not produced new fiction in four years and claimed to despise writing.

“Books are agony,” he told a friend, “but at least a script has an end in sight.”

What he delivered first was anything but short: a 240-page epic so detailed that the heroes did not reach Germany until page 60, and the finale ended with a wedding.

“It was a book,” recalled director Brian G. Hutton, “not a movie.”

Hutton, a former actor from the Bronx who had directed a few small pictures, was brought in by producer Elliott Kastner to refit MacLean’s labyrinth into a filmable thriller.

Together they cut nearly one-third of the script, replacing sentiment with strategy and crafting the intricate double-agent plot that would define the finished film. Hutton explained, “We took The Black Shrike, an earlier MacLean story, and tacked its ending on. We turned the whole thing into a machine—tight and fast.”

MacLean’s prose instincts, however, gave the screenplay an unusual density. He approached it like an engineer, designing cause-and-effect structures where every twist paid off. His dialogue was sparse, but beneath each line lay deception.

“MacLean wrote puzzles, not people,” Hutton said, “and that’s why the audience leaned forward instead of back.”

This mechanical precision later became a hallmark of the author’s thrillers and influenced writers from Frederick Forsyth to Clive Cussler.

By spring 1967 the final draft was complete. MGM executives at Boreham Wood were astonished by its ambition: a wartime espionage story requiring snowbound fortresses, parachute drops, explosions, and a cast that could bridge both sides of the Atlantic. Kastner sold it with one line—“It’s The Guns of Navarone with more twists.”

When MacLean later novelized the script for Collins Publishers, he followed the screenplay almost verbatim, making Where Eagles Dare his only work born directly for the screen.

For Hutton, it was the film that launched his reputation and his lifelong friendship with Clint Eastwood. For MacLean, it reaffirmed that his disciplined imagination could thrive beyond the printed page.

“You could build a bridge from that script,” Hutton joked. “Every nut and bolt was in the right place.”