Did You Know?

The role of Sherif Ali was originally intended for Horst Buchholz but he was forced to turn it down owing to his commitment to Billy Wilder's movie One, Two, Three. Second choice Alain Delon tested successfully but suffered problems with the brown contact lenses required for the role. Maurice Ronet was then cast but was replaced after difficulties with his French accent and his Arab dress (Lean complained "He looked like me walking around in drag").

Although 227 minutes long, this film has no women in speaking roles. It is reportedly the longest film not to have any dialog spoken by a woman.

The train wreck sequences were filmed in Spain.

The real T.E. Lawrence was actually riding from the Bovington Army Camp to his cottage in Cloud Hill when his tragic accident occurred. The scenes where Lawrence was tortured and assaulted by the Turks was actually from the book "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom," the supplementary material of "Revolt in The Desert." Due to the humiliation which he suffered, Lawrence refused to publish "The Seven Pillars," his life's work, but did publish it exclusively for 120 people only. The 120 people who read the book were delighted with it, and the book was published sometime after Lawrence died.

T.E. Lawrence declined invitations to film his writings as early as 1926, when Rex Ingram suggested the idea. Later, Alexander Korda tried to launch a version starring Leslie Howard, written by John Monk Saunders and directed by Lewis Milestone. Over the years, such stars as Robert Donat, Laurence Olivier, Cary Grant, Burgess Meredith, and Alan Ladd were all promoted as leads. Screenwriter Michael Wilson finally convinced Lawrence's brother to sell the film rights to Sam Spiegel by submitting his screenplay for approval in 1960.

Production was halted to move to Spain, but filming did not resume for three months because writer Robert Bolt had been jailed for participating in a nuclear disarmament demonstration. He was released only after Sam Spiegel persuaded him to sign an agreement of good behavior.

To film Omar Sharif's entrance through a mirage, Freddie Young used a special 482mm lens from Panavision. Panavision still has this lens, and it is known among cinematographers as the "David Lean lens". It was created specifically for this shot and has not been used since.

Charles Gray re-voiced some of the vocal performance of Jack Hawkins for the 1989 restored edition

Was voted the 18th Greatest Film of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in the 1970s, Peter O'Toole was describing just how long the movie took to make by referring to the scene when T.E. Lawrence and Gen. Allenby, after their meeting, continue talking while walking down a staircase. According to O'Toole, part of the scene had to be reshot much later, "so in the final print, when I get to the bottom of the stairs, I'm a year older than I was when I started walking down them."

Dilip Kumar was offered the role of Sherif Ali but declined.

Peter O'Toole claims he never viewed the completed film until nearly two decades after its original release, by which time he was highly impressed.

Gen. Murray (Donald Wolfit)'s line about the Arab revolt being "a sideshow of a sideshow" was actually spoken in real life by T.E. Lawrence himself, several years after the war.

Peter O'Toole's performance as T.E. Lawrence is the #1 ranked performance of all time in Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time.

Cary Grant was Sam Spiegel's first choice for General Allenby, but David Lean convinced him to cast Jack Hawkins due to his work for them on The Bridge on the River Kwai.

In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #7 Greatest Movie of All Time.

For the 1989 reconstruction and restoration, many scenes of dialog were missing. As a result Peter O'Toole and a number of living principals returned and re-recorded dialog from more than 20 years previously. For principals who had died in the intervening years sound alike actors were employed (for instance for Jack Hawkins).

The motorcycle T.E. Lawrence was riding when he was killed is a Brough Superior. He owned seven of them.

Peter O'Toole was nearly killed during the first take of the Aqaba scene. A gun (used to signal the beginning of the scene) went off prematurely, and O'Toole's camel panicked, throwing him to the ground, while the extras on horseback began charging. Fortunately for O'Toole, his camel stayed still and stood over O'Toole, saving him from being trampled.

Maurice Ronet was replaced by Omar Sharif in the part of Ali once filming commenced. Ronet was bought out of the film for four times the amount that Sharif was paid for his performance.

The film was largely based on T.E. Lawrence's autobiography "Seven Pillars of Wisdom," which a 1955 revisionist biography by Richard Adlington claimed was highly exaggerated.

Arthur Kennedy replaced Edmond O'Brien in the role of Jackson Bentley, the photo-journalist character based on Lowell Thomas, after O'Brien had a heart-attack on location after filming some scenes. In the early days of the production, when the Bentley character had a more prominent role in the film, Kirk Douglas was considered for the part. However, Douglas wanted a star salary and second billing after Peter O'Toole. Douglas' demands were rejected by producer Sam Spiegel and the Oscar-winner O'Brien was cast in the part. O'Brien filmed the Jerusalem scene, and supposedly Jackson's political discussion with Omar Sharif's character Ali before being felled by his heart attack. He was replaced on short notice by Kennedy, who was recommended to director David Lean by Anthony Quinn. Kennedy had replaced Quinn as King Henry II on Broadway in the play Becket. (Ironically, when "Becket" was made into a film, it was Peter O'Toole who was cast as Henry.)

Sam Spiegel, the producer of this film, was once known as S.P. Eagle. He had an amazing talent for finding unusual material and hiring exactly the perfect director to execute it. He produced one of Orson Welles's few commercial successes The Stranger. David Lean, the director of this masterpiece, was a well-respected director of moderate-budgeted English films when Spiegel brought him to international prominence with Lean's direction of The Bridge on the River Kwai. He also worked with John Huston, first on We Were Strangers and most notably on The African Queen. Finally he found the funding from Harry Cohn at Columbia for Elia Kazan's controversial On the Waterfront. Perhaps no other independent producer has been associated with so many brilliant film directors on so many diverse and original stories.

The film spent 2 years in pre-production before 14 months of shooting in locations like Jordan, Spain and Morocco.

Albert Finney's screen tests in Arab costume as T.E. Lawrence are the most requested viewing item in Britain's National Film Archive.

Producer Sam Spiegel was initially opposed to the casting of Peter O'Toole. He had already worked with the actor when he was understudy for Montgomery Clift on Suddenly, Last Summer as Clift's alcoholism had made him unreliable to work with.

Alec Guinness was made up to look like the real Faisal as close as possible. When they were shooting in Jordan, several people who knew the man mistook him for the real thing.

Jack Hawkins shaved his head to play General Allenby.

José Ferrer was initially very unsatisfied about the small part he was offered. He only accepted on condition that he be paid $25,000 - more than Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif combined - plus a factory made Porsche. Ironically Ferrer once said about his tiny role that he considered it to be the finest acting of his career.

Arthur Kennedy was cast as Edmond O'Brien's replacement largely at the suggestion of Anthony Quinn.

David Lean watched John Ford's The Searchers time after time for inspiration.

The town of Aqaba was recreated in a dried river bed in southern Spain, consisting of over 300 buildings.

This is Steven Spielberg's all-time favorite film.

Restorer Robert A. Harris and editor Anne V. Coates went through 450 rusted old film cans for the 1989 restoration.

After the tremendous success of The Bridge on the River Kwai, producer Sam Spiegel and David Lean were keen to work together on a similarly worthy topic. Initially the pair considered making a film of the life of Mohandas K. Gandhi but soon gave up on that.

Sam Spiegel was much taken with Robert Bolt's successful play A Man for All Seasons. When he and David Lean weren't happy with Michael Wilson's stab at the screenplay, he sent it to Bolt for rewriting. Bolt found the script lacking in good dialog and also character depth. He essentially rewrote the whole thing, using T.E. Lawrence's book 'The Seven Pillars of Wisdom' as his starting point.

Musically, Maurice Jarre was hired to write the dramatic score, Aram Khachaturyan was handling the eastern themes and Benjamin Britten was to provide the British imperial music. Neither Khatchaturian or Britten were able to properly get involved so Sam Spiegel hired Richard Rodgers to fill in the musical gaps. When Spiegel and Lean heard Rodgers' compositions, they were hugely disappointed, so they turned to Jarre to see what he had done. The minute Lean heard Jarre's now-classic theme, he knew they had the right composer. Jarre was given the job of scoring the whole film - in a mere six weeks.

T.E. Lawrence's brother, A.E. Lawrence, who was also executor of his will, wasn't keen on the film's representation of his brother so he didn't allow the use of his sibling's autobiography title "Seven Pillars of Wisdom".

Costume designer Phyllis Dalton devised a subtle way to indicate T.E. Lawrence's failing grip. As the film progresses, his robes become thinner and thinner until they are virtually translucent.

Costume designer Phyllis Dalton deliberately made Peter O'Toole's army outfit too small and ill-fitting to signify T.E. Lawrence's discomfort with the military uniform.

When filming in Jordan, every drop of water for the production was brought in by truck from the nearest well, 150 miles away.

Initially the production used white plastic cups for its drinking water but the wind would frequently pick up and blow them into the desert. After having numerous shots ruined due to errant white plastic cups, David Lean had them banned and replaced with ceramic mugs instead.

The charge on Aqaba employed 450 horses and 150 camels.

Two miles of track were laid for the train scenes.

Peter O'Toole claimed that he learned more about acting from his few days of filming with José Ferrer than he did in all his years at drama school.

At one point when filming was progressing far too slowly for his liking, producer Sam Spiegel invited William Wyler to visit the set. He wanted Wyler to encourage Lean to rely more on his second units for filming additional scenes, as he had done on Ben-Hur. The visit was to no avail, however, as Lean was too much of a perfectionist to relinquish control.

Montgomery Clift coveted the role of Lawrence and actively lobbied for the part with David Lean. Sam Spiegel, however, had a low opinion of Clift after the latter's drinking problems surfaced on Suddenly, Last Summer and refused to consider his casting.

Steven Spielberg estimated that to make the film today would cost in the region of $285 million.

When first telecast (by ABC-TV), the film was shown in two parts on two successive nights because of its four-hour length. Even so, it was edited so that Lawrence's rape by the Turks was even less explicit (and less comprehensible) than in the original film.

Peter O'Toole won his career-making (and legendary) part as Lawrence of Arabia after it was turned down by superstar Marlon Brando and a then-unknown Albert Finney. Both director David Lean and producer Sam Spiegel (who produced On the Waterfront, the movie for which Brando and Spiegel won their first Oscars) wanted Brando, but he turned the role down (allegedly saying he didn't want to spend two years of his life riding on a camel). Their second choice Finney was put through extensive screen-tests costing 100,000 pounds, but refused to sign a seven-year contract demanded by Spiegel. O'Toole signed the seven-year contract and got the part.