Left-wing critics dismiss Zulu as racist but sixty years after the film's premiere Brian Viner reveals that its makers used the filming in South Africa to challenge the evils of apartheid
The world premiere of Zulu, at the Plaza Theatre in London on January 22, 1964 - 60 years ago on Monday - was a predictably glittering affair.
Dressed in Victorian redcoat uniforms, rows of soldiers from the South Wales Borderers regiment stood guard in the foyer as members of the film's cast arrived, among them the still little-known Michael Caine, with the 21-year-old actress and future fashion designer Edina Ronay on his arm.
It seems unlikely that he told his companion what his nickname had been on set among the Zulu extras, and not only because it was a mouthful: 'Indoda Enezinwele Ezinde Nyengomnbazi'. It meant 'The One With The Hair Of A Woman'.
Leading man Stanley Baker, the rugged Welsh star who was also the film's producer, might have been happier with his Zulu name, 'Imehle Kwa Mamba'. That meant 'The One With the Eyes Of A Mamba'.
The premiere was carefully planned to coincide with the 85th anniversary of the Defence of Rorke's Drift, the battle depicted in the epic movie, in which, during the six-month Anglo-Zulu War in southern Africa, around 150 mostly English and Welsh troops repelled an attack on their garrison by some 4,000 Zulu warriors.
No fewer than 11 Victoria Crosses were awarded for acts of individual courage that day in what, collectively, remains one of the most heroic exploits, against overwhelming odds, in British military history.
![The world premiere of Zulu, at the Plaza Theatre in London on January 22, 1964 - 60 years ago on Monday - was a predictably glittering affair, writes Brian Viner](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/01/19/23/80244471-12985381-image-a-74_1705706197034.jpg)
The world premiere of Zulu, at the Plaza Theatre in London on January 22, 1964 - 60 years ago on Monday - was a predictably glittering affair, writes Brian Viner
But the film did not overlook the bravery and dignity of the Zulus, and nor did the organisers of the premiere, even if there was a whiff of condescension from a trade newspaper which noted that in the foyer, 'three Zulu girls helped out with the atmosphere'.
Still, at least it paid them the courtesy of naming them: Hazel Futsh, Mamsie Toboli and Patience Gwabi.
The deal to make the film had been concluded more than two years earlier with a handshake in the gents' toilet at the Dorchester Hotel, a prosaic start to what would become one of the crowning glories of the British film industry.
But to begin with, its working title was The Battle Of Rorke's Drift, until director Cy Endfield had a flash of inspiration.
They'd call it Zulu, which so appealed to American producer Joe Levine that he put up the money on the strength of it.
Much later, the film's screenwriter John Prebble speculated that Levine probably never even read the script, he just loved the title.
Once arrangements had been made to shoot the picture almost entirely on location in South Africa, it was decided that real Zulus should be hired to play their warrior ancestors.
South African politicians were delighted that a prestigious movie was being made in their country at a time when it was becoming politically isolated, but even so, the deplorable laws of apartheid were rigidly uncompromising.
For most of the filming, only 250 Zulus were allowed to take part, requiring directorial ingenuity to give the impression of thousands.
![Producer of the film 'Zulu' shows young women how to dance in 1963](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/01/20/01/80244473-12985381-Producer_of_the_film_Zulu_shows_young_women_how_to_dance_in_1963-a-53_1705715779434.jpg)
Producer of the film 'Zulu' shows young women how to dance in 1963
The authorities were wary of inviting more 'because they didn't want a rampaging mob' speculates first assistant director Bert Batt, in Sheldon Hall's fascinating book Zulu With Some Guts Behind It: The Making Of The Epic Movie.
They must have been mindful of the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, Hall suggests, in which 69 people were killed when police opened fire on a crowd of black protesters demonstrating against new segregation laws.
Whether or not the South African government was genuinely worried that a re-creation of events at Rorke's Drift might lead to actual violence, they were unyielding on the racist law that forbade Zulus and other black people from carrying firearms, which extended to the vintage rifles used in the film.
A concrete and steel armoury had to be built to house the weapons, Stanley Baker later recalled, wryly adding: 'We wouldn't want a repeat of 1879.'
The authorities were equally concerned about the implications of the white cast and crew mixing with Zulus.
Johannesburg's chief of police was waiting for the production team at Jan Smuts Airport when they first arrived from England, and painstakingly explained to them the dire consequences if they broke South Africa's strict anti-miscegenation laws, banning interracial sex.
He warned that they could be flogged. 'If I get caught, can I have the 12 lashes while I'm still doing it,' Baker responded.
Despite his quip - which, predictably, was not at all well-received - Baker took the apartheid laws seriously.
To break them might result in the production being shut down. On the other hand, to see extreme racial prejudice in action was a shock.
Caine, in his 1992 autobiography What's It All About?, recalled an Afrikaans foreman on the set punching a black worker, whom he'd accused of slacking, hard in the face.
Baker saw the incident and fired the foreman on the spot, then gathered the white 'bosses' together and told them such behaviour would not be tolerated. Since there were undercover policemen on the set at all times, that would undoubtedly have been reported back.
The film delivered a clash of cultures off screen as well as on, but as much between the British and white South Africans as between the British and the Zulu cast.
The latter relationship was greatly helped by the decision to ask the Zulu chief, Buthelezi, to play his own great-grandfather, King Cetshwayo. The offer came in the wake of an embarrassing incident, when the filmmakers, as a gesture of respect, invited him to see the early rushes of the battle scenes.
They set up a screen in the dining room of the Royal Natal National Park Hotel, naively unaware that apartheid laws would prevent even Chief Buthelezi from stepping foot in the hotel. So he and his entourage had to be smuggled in through the French windows.
And to add injury to insult, he was then shown footage of the first mock Zulu charge, in which the front-line warriors drew British fire and those who weren't killed fled in simulated terror, just to assess the strength of enemy resistance. Buthelezi watched in unimpressed silence.
![The film did not overlook the bravery and dignity of the Zulus, and nor did the organisers of the premiere](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/01/20/01/80244491-12985381-The_film_did_not_overlook_the_bravery_and_dignity_of_the_Zulus_a-a-52_1705715779432.jpg)
The film did not overlook the bravery and dignity of the Zulus, and nor did the organisers of the premiere
Once he had joined the cast, however, he was able to address his fellow Zulus (who were paid $40 a month each) and proved enormously helpful.
But there had been great concern among the crew when the first coachloads of extras, mostly from rural areas in what was still known as Zululand (now KwaZulu-Natal), turned up at the set.
Eschewing colourful tribal costumes because they didn't want to be thought 'primitive', one person arrived wearing a string vest and a bowler hat, another in a mac. Even seasoned film-industry veterans struggled to picture these new hires as fearsome warriors.
Moreover, none of them had ever seen a film before and, not unreasonably, weren't sure what was expected of them. So a projector and screen were set up outdoors and they were shown an old Western, so they might better understand the project.
'We showed it to the men first,' Baker said in a later interview, 'and they couldn't stop laughing. Their eyes were popping. I have never heard such unrestrained laughter.'
At first, some ran round the back of the screen to see where the gunfire was coming from. But after that there were regular screenings of cowboy films and also silent comedies starring Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, all of which they watched with 'noisy appreciation'. Once filming had begun, the Zulu extras were also shown the action that had been shot so far.
'They were laughing and pointing each other out,' one crew member recalled. 'They had no animosity about how we showed them. I asked how they felt about [the real battle] and they shrugged their shoulders and said: 'We lost some, you lost some.'
'Cy was keen to portray the Zulus in a good light, not like the Indians in American Westerns. He didn't want to show how we smashed the Zulus, but how they put up a tremendous fight.'
The extras were proud of playing their brave forebears, although it took a while before they themselves plucked up the courage to act out the attack on Rorke's Drift. At first some were convinced, perhaps understandably in the political climate, that they were going to be shot for real.
An appreciation for costume that was authentic to the battle was another learning curve for the extras. Baker later remarked on their habit of adorning themselves with anything that looked interesting.
'They have big holes in their ears,' he said, 'and they wear as earrings anything that takes their fancy. We found some men wearing spare film spools in their ears. We had to check carefully before each scene for incongruous elements.'
Some of them also needed coaching in how to perform their own historic tribal dances for the still-extraordinary ritual wedding scene, to which end Chief Buthelezi's mother, Princess Constance Magogo ka Dinuzulu, an expert on Zulu music, was brought in as an adviser.
Nightclub dancers from Durban and Johannesburg were recruited for the scene, but they were less willing to dance topless than the Zululand women, who also preferred not to wear anything under their beaded G-strings. Some nudity was required for authenticity, but Endfield anticipated problems from the British Board of Film Censors, as it was then known.
He agreed that the dancers should be topless, but duly asked the costume department to run up 200 pairs of black knickers.
In his latest autobiography, The Elephant To Hollywood, Caine explains what happened next. The resourceful Endfield 'had just managed to persuade the tribal dancers to wear the knickers when he was told that the city girls were insisting on wearing bras. This was the ultimate test for a film director: how to get knickers on one set of dancers and bras off the others'.
As Caine remembers it, Endfield eventually got it sorted and started rolling the camera. But then the cameraman shouted, 'Cut? We've got a lady here with no drawers on!'
The dancer was pulled out of the line and she apologetically explained through the translator that she wasn't used to them and had forgotten to put them on. 'That's the first and last time I've heard that excuse on a film set,' Caine wrote.
It was certainly a film set, and a cultural exchange, like no other. During breaks in filming the mostly British crew taught the Zulu extras the Twist, the Hokey-Cokey, and Knees Up, Mother Brown, while the Zulus taught them their traditional dances. Or tried to. Evidently the Zulus were much quicker learners.
By the time of the premiere, with the epic film ready to make a major charge at the box-office, the respect that Baker and Endfield had for the Zulus was greater than ever. They had, said Baker, put 'more heart and guts into their work than do many professionals'.
And Chief Buthelezi would return the compliment. In a 1996 interview, he contrasted the rampant racism in South Africa at the time with the empathy and decency shown by Baker and Endfield, who made it clear from the start that their film would 'portray the bravery on both sides'.
Maybe the last word on Zulu should belong to Caine, the only one of the main players still alive.
'The lack of jingoism means that it resonates for a modern audience in a way that other British war films just don't any longer,' he writes in The Elephant To Hollywood. 'It has never dated, and I remain very proud of it.'