Why is Brigitte Bardot "petrified with fear?" And why is B.B. making her first U.S. visit with a score of wigs (so she will pass unnoticed) and 50 dresses (so she will be noticed)? Because Viva Maria is premiering. Why has Thunderball's Director Terrence Young dropped in on New York from London? Because Thunderball is premiering (see CINEMA). And why is British Actress Julie Christie reducing photographers to awed silence as she peels down to her slip? Because Doctor Zhivago is premiering, along with a dozen other big films this month.
The reason behind all these reasons is simple: the regulations of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences state that a picture, in order to qualify for an Oscar, must play "in Los Angeles for a consecutive run of not less than a week after an opening prior to midnight of Dec. 31." Of all this year's pictures that have come down to the deadline, none carry a heavier freight of talent and hopes than Director David Lean's $11 million version of Boris Pasternak's distinguished bestseller, Doctor Zhivago, and none squeezed the deadline harder. Perfectionist Lean, 57, was overseeing the final cuts, the musical score and dubbing until the last hours before its press preview, which is the day before the official Manhattan première this week.
Don't Rat. "I haven't read the script, but I hear they've made it into a soap opera," snorts Producer Sam Spiegel, who crossed swords often enough with David Lean while filming Lawrence of Arabia. "I'm of Russian extraction," says Producer-Screenwriter Anatole de Grunwald, "and I came to Zhivago wanting to dislike it and was sure I would. But I think it is the best script I ever read—almost Tolstoyan." Those few who have been allowed inside Lean's wall-to-wall-carpeted cutting room on MGM's Culver City lot where Lean began his ordeal two months ago have seen only unfinished footage. But they are convinced that Lean has matched the intensity of The Bridge on the River Kwai, combined it with the sweep of Lawrence of Arabia, and in Julie Christie has caught a rising star and catapulted her into astro-orbit. If true, then Lean, who garnered seven Oscars for each of his past two films, including in both cases "best film" and "best director," is likely to collect as many more again for Zhivago.
But Is Lean's Zhivago Boris Pasternak's? The answer is neither yes nor no, but something like. From the moment Lean read the novel on shipboard and found himself gulping with tears, he knew he was committed. "I don't see how it is to be done," he declared. "But we must do it." For the screenplay, he called in British Playwright Robert Bolt (Man for All Seasons), who had salvaged the Lawrence script. "All I could see," says Bolt, "were the difficulties." His solution was to compress, invent, and try desperately to avoid "ratting on Pasternak."