The Unquiet Englishman by Richard Greene

Author:Richard Greene
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2020-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

Predictably, Our Man in Havana excited film producers, and Monica McCall, Greene’s American agent, thought she could get $125,000 for the rights. Alfred Hitchcock was the main early bidder and would go as high as £25,000 (about $70,000), but the idea of working with Hitchcock had no attraction for Greene. His old friend Carol Reed, backed by Columbia, then pushed Hitchcock aside with an offer of $100,000, which was accepted. After Mankiewicz’s betrayal of The Quiet American, Greene decided that he should write this script himself, a task for which he would receive another £6000 – the combined amounts coming fairly close to the original asking price.11 Moreover, he trusted no film-maker more than Reed, with whom he was now working for the third time. In mid-October, they flew to Cuba for two weeks to scout locations, and it was during this time that Greene garnered the new information which he passed on to Hugh Delargy. Reed was afraid that the regime would stop the filming, but Greene remarked, ‘Don’t worry, they’ll all be washed up by the time we’re ready to come back here for production.’12 He could see that Batista and his gang were into injury time.

Returning to England, they checked into adjoining rooms at the Hotel Metropole in Brighton and fell into their old pattern of collaboration. Greene woke early and wrote; he would hand what he had done to a typist working in their shared sitting room. Once she was finished, Reed, still lying in bed, would pore over it; they would confer during lunch, go back to work in the afternoon, and carouse in the evening. Greene had a revised version of the script ready around 22 November. Reed was still worried about conditions in Cuba, so they travelled to Seville and Cadiz to look for alternatives to Havana. On 7 December, Greene finished another version, with which Reed was ‘delighted’, but Greene was too exhausted to know whether it was any good.13 He continued tinkering, especially with the last scene, but the job was done.

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