Hell’s Tower (Arte): Battle of egos by Paul Newman and Steve McQueen

In 1973, Warner bought the rights to The Tower, a novel by Richard M. Stern that threw the reader into the fire of a skyscraper, and Fox in Inferno of Glass signed Thomas Scortia and Frank Robinson on the same issue. . Two studios join forces, invest fourteen million dollars and mix two stories in the same scenario: on the opening night of an ultramodern tower, a short circuit in faulty electrical wiring causes a fire. The fire spreads and the guests are trapped on the 135th floor.

HEADLINES

To avoid an ego fire, the production bowed to the demands of Paul Newman as Doug Roberts, the skyscraper’s architect, and Steve McQueen, who plays fire chief Michael O’Halloran: the salaries are equal ($1 million plus ten percent footage), same screen duration and the same number of lines. The two stars are looking at each other. As soon as McQueen learns that Newman has climbed the handrail of a collapsed staircase, he rushes out of a helicopter onto the roof of a building! Bullitt translator trained in firefighting movements. Helps firefighters when a real fire breaks out on set. One of them said to him: “My wife would never believe it! and McQueen, “Me too!” Behind the scenes, annoyed by Faye Dunaway’s repeated delays, William Holden, who plays the inconsistent promoter, teaches the actor a lesson. Therefore, it will be punctual!

GIANT MINIATURE TOWER

The tower that burned in 1974 must be represented by a model. Experts LB Abbott and AD Flowers first conduct their tests on a small metal structure with ten windows, behind which are fixed steel boxes equipped with a spark generator and three pipes. They reflect smokeless blue-flaming butane, orange-flaming acetylene emitting black smoke, and compressed air. By measuring these, Abbott adjusts the color of the fire and smoke and mixes the flames to give believable shapes. They were shot at 72 frames per second, slowed down to projection at 24 frames per second, and they look huge! After these tests, a 21 meter high metal model is made and hundreds of gas pipes are equipped with thousands of small light bulbs. The Hyatt Regency Hotel in San Francisco forms the background of the lobby. The capsule elevators outside the building have been reproduced on mock-ups and also in life-size for the action scenes shot in the studio. All that remains is to arrange the explosion of the water tanks at the top of the skyscraper. It was shot on a 3,300-square-foot, eight-foot-high embankment surrounded by a painted panorama of San Francisco. Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Fred Astaire and other actors are hooked up to the set when waves, driven by seven fire hoses, break. It’s one of those pieces of courage that still astounds us, fifty years after the movie’s release.

Inferno Tower at Arte on Sunday, April 30 at 20:50

PASCAL FORMAT