It was all started by from a moment when a school batch mate of mine was publishing a FB request for a clue on getting the book called "Elephant Walk" written by Robert Standish in 1949. According to her there was a Sinhala translation as "Ali Paara" (අලි පාර) but she wanted the English one.
Elephant Walk..... Hmmm... I felt it like a familiar name. Not because of "Elephant Pass" (අලිමංකඩ) in Jaffna but for the name itself; Elephant Walk.
Yes! it was the movie I heard of sometime back. The Hollywood movie filmed in Sri Lanka, aka Ceylon in 1954. I never had watched it fully before and never had learnt that there was a popular book among the Sri Lankan community and the film was based on it. I just have seen only few clips here and there, totally because of the reputation it had as a story happened in Ceylon, nothing else. It is wrong to say that I was much eager to watch it, but it was somewhere in the waiting list, totally due to the reasons I mentioned earlier; the film locations are in Ceylon and film was about something in Ceylon.
So after this, the priority was increased for the movie in the waiting list; told my friend that there is a movie on it; she was interested; told her where to find it; and there I was watching it too.
I don't think the whole story heavily got my attention, but should say a big budget and lot of effort clearly visible on it. I'm still wondering how they managed to handle such a large herd of elephants. Specially on the scenes when elephants invaded into the bungalow while hero and heroine escaping from the tragedy. And also it should be a high cost in doing the estate scenes with local people managing the cholera incident. And I don't know whether they had actually built that large mansion.
When talking about the story of the movie it was mainly about pride, according to my opinion. The story targets on describing the pride in two perspectives; pride of a man and pride of an elephant. I still don't know whether the movie and the book are exactly the same. According to the plot of the movie, [SPOILER ALERT!!!] it starts with John Wiley who was a tea planter, bringing his newly wedded bride to his home at Elephant Walk, Ceylon from England. I don't know where that place Elephant Walk is in Sri Lanka, because I have too much doubts about the place. It should be a place where it has tea plantations, should be wild as elephants are hanging around, and should be a place that can go to Polonnaruwa and come back in a horse ride within a day. I seriously wonder what that place could be. The Bungalow at Elephant Walk was built on a elephant walk by his farther; Tom Wiley; as to symbolize his pride and dignity. The local elephants are always showing the violent resistance for invading their territory. His farther is dead by now and his grave is also in the garden. Due to his faithful servant Appuhami (played by an Burmese actor), Tom Wiley is still ruling the place from his grave. All the traditions and living styles are still in place without a change as Tom Wiley's days. The new bride Ruth, doesn't like the way things happening around and both Appuhamy and John doesn't like she messing around with the traditions of the house. So the love between John and Ruth is fading gradually. With the unpleasant atmosphere in the house, the relentless behavior of her husband that she is seeing now and fearing that he is becoming like his father, as what she heard from the rumors about his father, the distance among her and him is getting widen. The plantation manager who works under John is Dick Carver. She feels he is a pleasant, attractive, smart and different among the friends of her husband, who are all drunken heads like as John.
As she was the only white woman in the whole district , she is getting closer to him day by day. One day after a fight, when she loosen her patience with John, she drove away with Dick to go to the Colombo, planning to go to England. But the road was blocked due to the cholera outbreak news on that day in the estate. I guess this atmosphere gives much color to the John Wiley character played by Peter Finch. Even though the John is a crazy drunken head, from this moment it shows how he cared about the estate, its local people and how responsible he is for his work. He is no longer that careless drunken head. And here you can see Peter Finch is carrying a little local kiddo to protect him from the disease. Lucky little kiddo!! Now hearing the news, Ruth and Dick came back to the bungalow and give their fullest support to overcome the cholera spread. Whatever the arguments Ruth having with John, she gives all what she can do for the local people. By seeing how hard she works for his master's estate and the people, Appuhami beginning to respect her. By seeing how hard worker and responsible man John is like as she knew him before in England, Ruth beginning to forget the arguments. When the cholera outbreak is getting over, John tells both Ruth and Dick that they can leave, without looking a glance at them, meaning that he no longer care about Ruth. So Dick and Ruth decided to leave even though she have a little hesitation to leave John. Before moving out Ruth takes a nap in the bungalow finally after the long hard days and the only servant in the bungalow was Appuhami. Locals are busy with recovering from the cholera outbreak and both John and Dick are gone help them. As there is no one to be alert about the elephants, those fierce animals invade into the Bungalow in hostile manner and no one to stop them this time. When hearing the news of elephants stampede towards bungalow, the first person who looks whereabouts of Ruth is John and hearing that she is in bungalow, the first person who went there is John. Meaning that he still cares about Ruth, and hidden it under his arrogant behavior all these days. Finally he rescued her. But Appuhami getting killed by 'the' elephant on the grave of his master.
As she was the only white woman in the whole district , she is getting closer to him day by day. One day after a fight, when she loosen her patience with John, she drove away with Dick to go to the Colombo, planning to go to England. But the road was blocked due to the cholera outbreak news on that day in the estate. I guess this atmosphere gives much color to the John Wiley character played by Peter Finch. Even though the John is a crazy drunken head, from this moment it shows how he cared about the estate, its local people and how responsible he is for his work. He is no longer that careless drunken head. And here you can see Peter Finch is carrying a little local kiddo to protect him from the disease. Lucky little kiddo!! Now hearing the news, Ruth and Dick came back to the bungalow and give their fullest support to overcome the cholera spread. Whatever the arguments Ruth having with John, she gives all what she can do for the local people. By seeing how hard she works for his master's estate and the people, Appuhami beginning to respect her. By seeing how hard worker and responsible man John is like as she knew him before in England, Ruth beginning to forget the arguments. When the cholera outbreak is getting over, John tells both Ruth and Dick that they can leave, without looking a glance at them, meaning that he no longer care about Ruth. So Dick and Ruth decided to leave even though she have a little hesitation to leave John. Before moving out Ruth takes a nap in the bungalow finally after the long hard days and the only servant in the bungalow was Appuhami. Locals are busy with recovering from the cholera outbreak and both John and Dick are gone help them. As there is no one to be alert about the elephants, those fierce animals invade into the Bungalow in hostile manner and no one to stop them this time. When hearing the news of elephants stampede towards bungalow, the first person who looks whereabouts of Ruth is John and hearing that she is in bungalow, the first person who went there is John. Meaning that he still cares about Ruth, and hidden it under his arrogant behavior all these days. Finally he rescued her. But Appuhami getting killed by 'the' elephant on the grave of his master.
So that's how the things getting along. As I said earlier the movie was about something in Ceylon and it was filmed in Ceylon. So the major cast came into Ceylon in 50s for the shooting [1], and the actress who came to Ceylon to play the role of Ruth was Vivien Leigh, but you would not see her as Ruth in the film. It was originally planned as a husband and wife film with Leigh and her husband Olivier. But Olivier was unable to commit for this film as he had other work to do. So Peter Finch was selected as John. After few days on location shooting with Leigh and the cast in Ceylon successfully, she was suffered with mental breakdown [2] and was unable to continue with the film and eventually dropped out. The character Ruth was then replaced by Elizabeth Taylor and most of the scenes filmed on Leigh in Ceylon have to be drop out. The scenes that can be changed into Liz under studio environment with technical effects were only used. So if anyone thinks that Liz came to Sri Lanka for the Elephant Walk, then it's untrue. All work done with Liz happened in a studio [5]. The budget was increased due to the Leigh's problem and the replacement work and most of the nice shots done in Ceylon with Leigh were utterly wasted.
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Reference
[1]: Vernon Corea Tribute Blog. (2013, Aug) Tag Archives Elephant Walk [Online]. Available: https://vernoncorea.wordpress.com/tag/elephant-walk/ [Accessed October, 2016]
Vernon Corea was a legendary Radio Ceylon/SLBC and BBC Broadcaster. This blog contains more information with images about the movies filmed on Ceylon. Here is another link for information on films where locations were used as Ceylon. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/110522/Plus/plus_01.html written by Richard Boyle, a well known British writer who has much taste on Sri Lanka like as Arthur C. Clarke.
Vernon Corea was a legendary Radio Ceylon/SLBC and BBC Broadcaster. This blog contains more information with images about the movies filmed on Ceylon. Here is another link for information on films where locations were used as Ceylon. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/110522/Plus/plus_01.html written by Richard Boyle, a well known British writer who has much taste on Sri Lanka like as Arthur C. Clarke.
[2]: Richard Boyle, The Sunday Times Plus. (2012, Aug) Vivien Leigh: How Elephant Walk lost its star in Ceylon [Online]. Available: http://www.sundaytimes.lk/120805/plus/vivien-leigh-how-elephant-walk-lost-its-star-in-ceylon-7808.html [Accessed October, 2016]
Was the reason behind behavior of Leigh is Devil Dancing? Whoa!!
[3]: Nalaka Gunawardane, Ground Views. (2011, May) Elephant Walk revisited: Mixing Tea, Jumbos and Monsoons [Online] Available: http://groundviews.org/2011/05/24/elephant-walk-revisited-mixing-tea-jumbos-and-monsoons/ [Accessed October, 2016]
Nalaka Gunawardane was a well known journalist who have easy access to every kind of modern tastes such like science, technology, inventions, movies, literature, politics, civilization....arr.... etc. written this review with the support of Richard Boyle. It's a good review with the background information.
Was the reason behind behavior of Leigh is Devil Dancing? Whoa!!
[3]: Nalaka Gunawardane, Ground Views. (2011, May) Elephant Walk revisited: Mixing Tea, Jumbos and Monsoons [Online] Available: http://groundviews.org/2011/05/24/elephant-walk-revisited-mixing-tea-jumbos-and-monsoons/ [Accessed October, 2016]
Nalaka Gunawardane was a well known journalist who have easy access to every kind of modern tastes such like science, technology, inventions, movies, literature, politics, civilization....arr.... etc. written this review with the support of Richard Boyle. It's a good review with the background information.
[4]: Ceylon Memory Project. (2013, Aug) Devan de Mel Collection [Online] Available: http://threeblindmen.photoshelter.com/gallery/Devan-de-Mel-Collection/G0000cvedJngsQ.o/C0000ho.zxgezp.w [Accessed October, 2016]
Ceylon Memory Project looks like a digital archive of old photographs of Ceylon from family albums up to the year 1972. This Collection include some photographs of Peter Finch and Vivien Leigh when they are at Copacabana Night Club, Colombo with this De Mel Family. Bevis Bawa is also can be seen on them.
Ceylon Memory Project looks like a digital archive of old photographs of Ceylon from family albums up to the year 1972. This Collection include some photographs of Peter Finch and Vivien Leigh when they are at Copacabana Night Club, Colombo with this De Mel Family. Bevis Bawa is also can be seen on them.
[5]: Greg Philip, A Lost Film, (2013, May) Elephant Walk [Online] Available: http://www.alostfilm.com/2013/05/elephant-walk.html [Accessed October, 2016]
This site includes the images of scenes of Leigh and how it was replaced by Liz with studio recreation.
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So that was the story about the production. But the big story for me is not that. As I was wondering, what could be this place, the first idea came through was "Elephant Pass". But elephants in Jaffna? (Whoa!! Never thought about that before) Seriously! How could that be possible? How does Elephant Pass got it's name when there are no elephants in Jaffna? Those are the questions in my mind and here is what I found in the Internet sphere.
- Explore Sri Lanka : Northward Bound: Elephant Pass -
Ref : http://exploresrilanka.lk/2011/04/northward-bound-elephant-pass/
So it cannot be Elephant Pass. This Elephant Pass is not a natural elephant pass.
Then I looked at the filming locations.
Ratmalana Airport, Colombo for the airport scene
Kiri Vihara, Polonnaruwa for the temple ruin scenes
Hantana, Kandy for the tea plantation scenes
Sigiriya, Matale for the jungle and elephant scenes
How funny, three separated places.
Then I went on searching whether the book is a true story or a fiction. But I wasn't able to find much about that or about the author. Only found out the name Robert Standish was the pen name used by the author Digby George Gerahty. Also I was unable to find anything about his relationship with the Ceylon. According to the article on Sri Lankan Airlines Magazine [6], it says something like this:
"in 1952 Paramount Pictures purchased the rights of Elephant Walk, a novel by Robert Standish published in 1948. It's an example of the literary genre generated by coffee and tea cultivation in Ceylon, "the plantation drama", which began with William Knighton's Forest Life in Ceylon (1854) and continues to this day. The story is partly based on fact; a history of the Careys, a 19th Century pioneering British coffee-planting family. However, the business collapsed when St George Carey died aged just 28. [6]"
William Knighton's (විලියම් නයිටන්) Forest Life in Ceylon... hmm... That name caught my eye. Then I went on finding this book and; OMG!!! where I was lead into! A huge collection of digitized book archive; for the books now in public domain. I knew that there were so many projects on creating publicly accessible digital libraries majorly in Europe and USA for the books now in the public domain to download freely as ebooks, but never had that idea it would contain books about Sri Lanka aka Ceylon.
As Sri Lanka doesn't took seriously, this kind of an initiative, for public to access the books now in public domain, freely without needing of creating any user accounts, we can satisfy at least from this. I saw a silent Sri Lankan but a high academic profile Dr. Kavan Ratnatunga who alone did the digitization on http://lakdiva.org/ with the collaboration of Project Gutenberg, contributing the free access for people on what he have.
Most societies place importance on preserving artifacts of their culture and heritage. Without such artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures. Our culture now produces more and more artifacts in digital form. The Archive's mission is to help preserve those artifacts and create an Internet library for researchers, historians, and scholars.
Preservation is important. That's what we can give for future generation as highlighted in the above quote. With this I remembers a certain documentary I watched sometime back about burning of Jaffna Public Library called "Burning Memories". It was happened 1981 and documentary was created in 2008 when 4th Eelam war is taking place. Whatever the wounds documentary is talking about, which one is right or which one is correct, it will gives you the thought, the preservation is important.
So it cannot be Elephant Pass. This Elephant Pass is not a natural elephant pass.
Then I looked at the filming locations.
Ratmalana Airport, Colombo for the airport scene
Kiri Vihara, Polonnaruwa for the temple ruin scenes
Hantana, Kandy for the tea plantation scenes
Sigiriya, Matale for the jungle and elephant scenes
How funny, three separated places.
Then I went on searching whether the book is a true story or a fiction. But I wasn't able to find much about that or about the author. Only found out the name Robert Standish was the pen name used by the author Digby George Gerahty. Also I was unable to find anything about his relationship with the Ceylon. According to the article on Sri Lankan Airlines Magazine [6], it says something like this:
"in 1952 Paramount Pictures purchased the rights of Elephant Walk, a novel by Robert Standish published in 1948. It's an example of the literary genre generated by coffee and tea cultivation in Ceylon, "the plantation drama", which began with William Knighton's Forest Life in Ceylon (1854) and continues to this day. The story is partly based on fact; a history of the Careys, a 19th Century pioneering British coffee-planting family. However, the business collapsed when St George Carey died aged just 28. [6]"
William Knighton's (විලියම් නයිටන්) Forest Life in Ceylon... hmm... That name caught my eye. Then I went on finding this book and; OMG!!! where I was lead into! A huge collection of digitized book archive; for the books now in public domain. I knew that there were so many projects on creating publicly accessible digital libraries majorly in Europe and USA for the books now in the public domain to download freely as ebooks, but never had that idea it would contain books about Sri Lanka aka Ceylon.
If you have heard of the wayback machine, then it is the same place. Their digitized book collection was another initiative to preserve knowledge and literature.
The Internet Archive is a San Francisco–based nonprofit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials; including web sites, software applications/games, music, movies/videos, images, and nearly three million public-domain books.
So here our focus is on the Internet Archive Text Archive collection. It includes digitized books and special collections from various libraries and cultural heritage institutions from around the world. When checking the books about Ceylon, I had often seen the name of University of California as the library contributor. With the support of scanning centers all around the world and financial support by many libraries and foundations it has the largest collection than any other project had. I have seen many times the name of MSN (Microsoft) as the sponsor for many books that I randomly checked on Ceylon. (But later MSN gone out of the project without any contractual restriction and donated most of their technologies). Google is also became a contributor after public users began uploading their Google books. Likewise this one got many backing from various institutions both academical and technological.
If you are a good navigator on the Internet, know all the tactics on searching, know how what keywords to use, this archive is a good place for you. Because it allows community input as well. But for the authenticity, I guess it's better to stick with reputed collections such like American Libraries, California Digital Library, University of Toronto - Robarts Library..etc. The importance of this is, you don't need to know the name or author of the book. If you want to read about a certain field of Ceylon, you can look for a categorizing topic as below.
The Internet Archive is a San Francisco–based nonprofit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials; including web sites, software applications/games, music, movies/videos, images, and nearly three million public-domain books.
So here our focus is on the Internet Archive Text Archive collection. It includes digitized books and special collections from various libraries and cultural heritage institutions from around the world. When checking the books about Ceylon, I had often seen the name of University of California as the library contributor. With the support of scanning centers all around the world and financial support by many libraries and foundations it has the largest collection than any other project had. I have seen many times the name of MSN (Microsoft) as the sponsor for many books that I randomly checked on Ceylon. (But later MSN gone out of the project without any contractual restriction and donated most of their technologies). Google is also became a contributor after public users began uploading their Google books. Likewise this one got many backing from various institutions both academical and technological.
If you are a good navigator on the Internet, know all the tactics on searching, know how what keywords to use, this archive is a good place for you. Because it allows community input as well. But for the authenticity, I guess it's better to stick with reputed collections such like American Libraries, California Digital Library, University of Toronto - Robarts Library..etc. The importance of this is, you don't need to know the name or author of the book. If you want to read about a certain field of Ceylon, you can look for a categorizing topic as below.
- Using directly their topics - "Sri Lanka -- Description and travel"
As Sri Lanka doesn't took seriously, this kind of an initiative, for public to access the books now in public domain, freely without needing of creating any user accounts, we can satisfy at least from this. I saw a silent Sri Lankan but a high academic profile Dr. Kavan Ratnatunga who alone did the digitization on http://lakdiva.org/ with the collaboration of Project Gutenberg, contributing the free access for people on what he have.
Most societies place importance on preserving artifacts of their culture and heritage. Without such artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures. Our culture now produces more and more artifacts in digital form. The Archive's mission is to help preserve those artifacts and create an Internet library for researchers, historians, and scholars.
Preservation is important. That's what we can give for future generation as highlighted in the above quote. With this I remembers a certain documentary I watched sometime back about burning of Jaffna Public Library called "Burning Memories". It was happened 1981 and documentary was created in 2008 when 4th Eelam war is taking place. Whatever the wounds documentary is talking about, which one is right or which one is correct, it will gives you the thought, the preservation is important.
Reference
[6]: Richard Boyle, Serendib - The Magazine of Sri Lankan Airlines (2013, June) Elephant Walk: Gold Movie Of A Golden Era [Online] Available: http://serendib.btoptions.lk/article.php?issue=42&id=1063 [Accessed October, 2016]
[6]: Richard Boyle, Serendib - The Magazine of Sri Lankan Airlines (2013, June) Elephant Walk: Gold Movie Of A Golden Era [Online] Available: http://serendib.btoptions.lk/article.php?issue=42&id=1063 [Accessed October, 2016]
