‘Noah’s Ark’: the shocking movie incident that led three actors to drown
Throughout the history of cinema, there have been countless unfortunate incidents that have defined the legacies of productions. Ranging from reports about the haunted sets of horror films to unpredictable escalations of feuds between celebrities, such accounts often overshadow the impact of the projects they are associated with. However, one movie from the 1920s was responsible for something much more dangerous and tragic.
After the devastating tragedy that took place on the set of Alec Baldwin’s Rust, there have been several conversations about the importance of safety standards on a film set. However, safety wasn’t a major priority during the production of Michael Curtiz’s 1928 epic Noah’s Ark. Made during a time when the medium was rapidly moving towards the incorporation of sound, this has been categorised as a disaster movie by many critics, but the catastrophes weren’t just restricted to the screen.
Utilising Biblical frameworks to deliver contemporary sociopolitical critique, Noah’s Ark was a massive production which employed more than 7,000 extras, including none other than John Wayne. Some accounts estimate that around 600,000 US gallons were used for the infamous flood scene, resulting in devastating consequences. In addition to multiple injuries and other damages, it is alleged that three extras ended up drowning.
The film’s star, Dolores Costello, recalled how Curtiz was responsible for the technical decisions: “There was much blood… Mr. Curtiz had been told which were the breakaway and which were the permanent parts of the set. And they had longhorn steer in there and human beings and some dummies. But he put the human beings where the real set was and the dummies where the breakaway was because he wanted ‘realism’, as he called it.”
Due to the uncontrollable nature of filming such a sequence with that amount of water, a lot of employees were put in harm’s way. However, multiple members of the cast and crew insisted that both Curtiz and Darryl F. Zanuck were well aware of the potential hazards. In fact, according to some testimonies that emerged from the horrifying production, they were perfectly fine with risking the lives of their colleagues.
Cinematographer Hal Mohr tried to warn them about the impending disaster: “I said, ‘Jesus, what are you going to do about the extra people?’ He [Curtiz] said, ‘Oh, they’re going to have to take their chances.’ I said, ‘Not as far as I am concerned. I’ll never have anything to do with a thing like that’… They insisted they were going to do it the way they wanted to do it, so I told them to shove the picture and walked off the set.”
The investigations that followed the accident and the legal files maintained by Warner Bros contain no concrete reports of the actual fatalities. While it is not clear whether eyewitness accounts turned exaggerations into reality or powerful studio executives buried the truth, the production of Noah’s Ark should never have been allowed to risk human lives.
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