I assembled my team: Jonathan Sanger would join Brooksfilms as the producer, Stuart Cornfeld would be the executive producer, and Randy Auerbach acted as Brooksfilms’ researcher and project manager. We had the script and now we needed a really gifted director who could bring it to the screen.
Stuart took me to the Nuart Theatre, a small out-of-the-way movie house on Santa Monica Boulevard known for showing different films like John Waters’s Pink Flamingos （1972）。 We went there because Stuart was bugging me to see the work of this guy, a new director on the block called David Lynch, and his new film Eraserhead （1977）。 It was a beautiful film, and like I wanted The Elephant Man to be, it was in black and white. It was weird and crazy, but in the end for a novice filmmaker it was a wonderful picture.
I still couldn’t really believe that this was the director for The Elephant Man, but Stuart was convinced. So I met with David Lynch. He’d only meet at one place, a restaurant called Bob’s Big Boy, where they served hamburgers and milkshakes. It was way out in the Valley. When I first saw him I thought, Am I meeting David Lynch or Charles Lindbergh? He had on a white shirt buttoned all the way to the top and was wearing a worn leather aviator’s jacket. I wasn’t expecting David to be so polite, but he wasn’t blowing smoke—he was genuine. He was an artist in his own right, and I was impressed with his work. He had read the script and he was very savvy about how he thought it should be directed and about certain changes in the script that he wanted, which all seemed spot-on to me. It was the outsider aspect of the story that appealed to him. And that’s where we met mentally and creatively. I’ve always loved a story where the “against the odds” leading character prevails.
Before I hired him, I wanted to see how he would get along with the writers. The next thing I did was have story conferences with David, Christopher, and Eric. They bonded immediately and quickly accepted David’s vision of how the film should progress. Even though he was unknown and that would make raising the money more difficult, I knew he was the perfect choice to be the director of The Elephant Man. I can honestly say I’m giving myself a pat on the back for braving the unknown and making the right decision.
But most of the studio heads weren’t nearly as brave. I got a resounding barrage of no’s from almost every studio in town. The notable exception was Paramount Pictures, run at the time by future Disney chief Michael Eisner. Michael told me that he had read the script overnight, and when he finished it, he was brought to tears. Eisner and Paramount signed on to distribute the film. I will be forever grateful for studio heads like that.
David Lynch’s casting choices were superb. The title character, the Elephant Man, was a nearly impossible role to cast. But we found him. Together—David and I and Jonathan and Stuart—all agreed that the brilliant John Hurt was the only actor in the world to play the Elephant Man. I remembered specifically his remarkable performances first in a TV movie called The Naked Civil Servant as leading character Quentin Crisp, who was openly gay at a time when that was dangerous behavior in the UK, and then also his unforgettable role as Caligula in the epic miniseries I, Claudius. His acting blew me away.
Quickly the rest of the cast came together after that. For Dr. Treves, who saves the Elephant Man from a terrible existence, we got the wonderful Anthony Hopkins, who I remembered being so outstanding as young Prince Richard in The Lion in Winter （1968）。 Wendy Hiller was marvelous as the head nurse who tenderly sees to the needs of the Elephant Man when many others in the hospital are frightened by him. We got the terrific Freddie Jones to play the wickedly brutal Bytes, the keeper of the Elephant Man. For the austere hospital governor Carr Gomm we were lucky to get Sir John Gielgud, who was usually too busy playing parts like King Lear on the Old Vic stage to do anything as lowly and frivolous as a movie.
A fun note…almost every day on set at the end of filming the great actor Ralph Richardson （known for his roles in movies like H. G. Wells’s Things to Come [1936], The Fallen Idol [1948], and later unforgettably as Olivia de Havilland’s stern father in Henry James’s classic The Heiress [1949]） would pull up on his big BMW motorcycle, blow his horn, and shout, “Hey, Johnny! I’m here!” He was referring to Sir John Gielgud, his best pal. Sir John would wave goodbye to us and hop on the back of Ralph’s motorcycle and off they sped—two of the best actors that ever lived.
John Hurt as “the Elephant Man” playing Romeo with Anne Bancroft as elegant British actress Mrs. Kendal playing Juliet. Their scene blew me away.