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Hardy Kruger (1928-2022) |
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- Riccardo Garrone, Eva, France-Italy, 1962. Exiled US film-maker Joseph Losey wanted Krüger and Stanley Baker again, after their Blind Date (US: Chance Meeting), 1959. But that was a UK film - Eva was a Franco-Italian co-prod,. And that meant he had to use some Italian actors. So the producing Hakim brothers refused - among thereasons why Baker told me “they couldn’t produce a fart out of a tin of beans.”
- Richard Harris,Il Deserto rosso(UK: The Red Desert), Italy-France, 1963. Krüger met with the leading lady, Monica Vitti but her fella, director Michelangelo Antonioni, voted Irish. And Harris told me: “I knew exactly when his love affair with me was over.” He fled the film before completion to get to LA in time for Major Dundee,1965, leaving Antonioni to cope with a double. David Hemmings (warned off the slow Antonioni by Harris when agreeing to Blow Up, 1966) said Harris was sacked for punching out the director.
- Maximilian Schell, The Black Hole, 1978. One Swede, three Germans and six Brits were dsicussed for Dr Hans Reinhardt - heading a mission aboard the US spaceship, Palomino, to find habitable spots in space. Max von Sydow; Anton Diffring, Curd Jürgens, Hardy Krüger; plus Harry Andrews, Peter Cushing, Jeremy Kemp, Hardy Kruger Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom, Donald Pleasence and Patrick Troughton. This was Disney’s first attempt at science fiction - and a PG rating. Never got it right until buying Lucasfilm and the Star Wars franchise. In 2014.
- Frank Finlay, Lifeforce, 1984.
Footnote>>> I first interviewed Krüger in May 1958. He was shooting Bachelor of Hearts with Sylvia Syms in Cambridge - and I was still doing my National Service in the RAF, around the corner in Brampton. You can put a journalist in uniform, but you can’t take the journalist out of the uniform.
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