by Amit Roy
INDIA owes a deep debt of gratitude to Richard Attenborough who put India and the Mahatma on the world map with his epic film, Gandhi, which took eight Oscars in 1983.
Now we learn much more about the making of the movie from Attenborough’s archives, which are lodged at Sussex University.
According to the Daily Telegraph, they occupy 262ft of shelves. “Within that, there are 70 boxes of material relating to Gandhi. And within those 70 boxes, perhaps the most striking story – the most apposite dilemma, in the eyes of the 2018 reader – is the long-running attempt to cast an actor to play Gandhi himself.”
Ben Kingsley, who was memorably cast as Gandhi, wasn’t the director’s first choice. Kingsley was born Krishna Pandit Bhanji – he was the son of a Gujarati Muslim from Kenya and an English mother from Yorkshire – but changed his name when he discovered it was preventing him from getting work.
For years, Attenborough tried desperately to get Alec Guinness to play the role even though the actor’s casting as Prof Godbole in David Lean’s A Passage to India in 1984 had been panned by critics.
In those days, it was not considered controversial for a white actor to “brown up” to play an Asian. John Hurt was considered, as were other even more unlikely names.
“Some of the casting options in the Gandhi files make for comical reading,” the Telegraph observes with the benefit of hindsight. “Albert Finney turned down the part, in rather gruff terms. Marlon Brando, fresh from playing the – bald, it’s true, but – monstrously large Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, was proposed for the role of the starving leader. Dustin Hoffman ditto, as well as Al Pacino. Peter Falk – aka Columbo – came up, and so did, in the words of Attenborough, ‘Peter Sellers (bless him)’.”
Attenborough finally came round to the view that casting a white actor as Gandhi would be a bad mistake: “The whole experience has convinced me unequivocally that casting a pure-blooded Caucasian in an Indian part would be a fundamental error.”
Kingsgley was screen-tested on July 25, 1980 at Shepperton Studios. After watching the rushes, Attenborough teased Kingsley by making the offhand remark: “Well, I suppose you’d better play it then.”
Three years later, Attenborough and Kingsley picked up the Oscars for Best Director and Best Actor respectively.
