Nigel Green – The Laconic Wardaddy

Zulu tells the story of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift which took place in 1879 at the outset of the Anglo-Zulu war. The film was shot on location in South Africa* in 1963 at the height of South Africa’s apartheid regime and at the tail end of British colonialism. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had given his famous ‘winds of change’ speech to the South African parliament in 1960 and by the time Zulu premiered in 1964 six African colonies had gained their independence – including Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda. Over the following four years another seven countries in Africa took down the Union Jack.

The fact that this very celebratory British war film was directed by an American and bankrolled by MGM is definitely a little confusing. Like Lewis Milestone, Endfield appears to have been another victim of shifting political winds in Washington because he was also singled out by McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee for an earlier film he’d made at the behest of the government. His short film Inflation had actually been commissioned by the Office of War Information in order to bolster Roosevelt’s wartime policies of price controls and rationing. However, by the 1950s, its message was considered anti-capitalist. It didn’t help that Endfield had briefly been a member of the Young Communist League in the 1930s. Finding himself blacklisted in Hollywood Endfield moved to Great Britain to find work whereupon he formed a creative partnership with British actor Stanley Baker.

For his part Stanley Baker had been born into a coal-mining family in South Wales and was a lifelong supporter of Britain’s (then progressive) Labour party . The man who co-wrote the screenplay to Zulu, John Prebble, had also briefly been a member of the communist party before the second world war. All that is to say that the people who made Zulu had legitimate left-wing credentials and, one might assume, no real fondness for British imperialism. And yet together they made one of the most jingoistic tributes to the British Empire.

Endfield’s film also launched the career of Michael Caine – who believed that he’d been overlooked up to that point on account of his cockney accent and working class origins. According to Caine it took an American director to see his potential.

The film also raised the profile of Nigel Green. Green was born in South Africa but grew up in England and studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Thanks to his height and his commanding presence he was often cast as soldiers and warriors – appearing as Little John in a 1960 adaptation of Robin Hood and as Hercules in Don Chaffey’s Jason and the Argonauts (1963). He had a great run as a character actor in the 1960s but died in 1972 due to an overdose of sleeping pills. He was 47.

About 250 Zulus played a part in the film – only four of which are credited in the closing titles. Under South Africa’s laws at the time the Zulu extras could not be paid the same amount as their white counterparts, so Cy Endfield donated all of the cattle that had been purchased for the stampede scene to the tribes involved.

Initially the South African government restricted screenings of the film to white audiences because they feared “it might incite [the black population] to rise up in revolt.”. Under pressure the government relented slightly and allowed a limited screening for those Zulus who’d served as extras on the film. There’s a great writeup of what happened behind the scenes in The Independent by journalist Sheldon Hall.

In the opening to the film Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi plays his great grandfather – King Cetshwayo. Buthelezi would go on to become the minister of home affairs in Nelson Mandela’s first government. Later in life he defended the film from accusations of racism and insisted that the Zulus and the British developed a deep respect for one another during the conflict. In an interview in 2018 he insisted that:

‘Even if the past is uncomfortable, and perhaps especially when the past is uncomfortable, it needs to be examined and unpacked rather than hidden away. Of course race is a central theme in the film.’

*Although the location chosen by Endfield for Rorke’s Drift appears to be a much more scenic valley at the foot of the Drakensburg range.