No Time to Die (1958 film)

In Italian Libya during the North African campaign of the Second World War, a Royal Armoured Corps squadron of British tanks is destroyed in battle by German Afrika Korps panzers. A tank commanded by American Sgt. David Thatcher is hit and he and driver Trooper "Tiger" Noakes bail out. The squadron's attached reconnaissance vehicle, commanded by Sgt. Kendall, becomes stuck in the sand and the crew bail out too. The three survivors are quickly captured and transported to an Italian POW camp run by German Army Captain Ritter.

Unbeknownst to the Axis prison guards, Thatcher had previously tried to assassinate Joseph Goebbels in revenge for the killing of his Jewish wife and tries to escape at every turn before the Nazis discover his secret. The British NCO in charge, Sgt. Kendall, arranges an escape of Thatcher, Noakes, Bartlett, and a Polish prisoner in an ambulance before the Schutzstaffel can detain Thatcher, and the Pole kills the German mole Johnson. They escape through the Libyan Desert in sandstorms, briefly taking shelter at the nightclub of Thatcher's friend Carola in Italian Benghazi before she is accidentally shot by the Italian officer Alberto.

Over the course of the trip the Pole grows increasingly homicidal, indiscriminately killing two German officers the group captures. After Kendall vows to court-martial the Pole when they return home, he allows a Bedouin tribe led by a sheikh loyal to the SS to kill Bartlett and capture the surviving men. When the SS tries to torture Thatcher into confessing, Captain Ritter becomes so disgusted that he helps the men escape and then commits suicide. Kendall takes the sheikh and the SS colonel hostage, but the Pole initiates a shootout that leaves him wounded and the sheikh and the colonel dead. They steal a truck, which is met by a rival group of Bedouins which warn them of a nearby German panzer division. They capture a tank, but Kendall and the Pole are killed while their tank is disabled. However, a British tank battalion arrives to save them. The German panzers are defeated, and Thatcher and Noakes bury Kendall.

• Victor Mature as Sgt. David Thatcher
• Leo Genn as Sgt. Kendall
• Anthony Newley as Noakes
• Bonar Colleano as the Pole
• Luciana Paluzzi as Carola
• Sean Kelly as Bartlett
• Kenneth Fortescue as Johnson
• Anne Aubrey as Italian girl
• George Coulouris as Camp commandant
• Alfred Burke as Captain Ritter
• David Lodge as Maj. Fred Patterson
• Maxwell Shaw as the Sheikh
• Alan Tilvern as Silverio
• George Pravda as German Sgt.
• Percy Herbert as 1st British soldier
• Kenneth Cope as 2nd British soldier
• Robert Rietti as Alberto
• Martin Boddey as Gestapo Colonel
• Richard Marner as German colonel
• Peter Elliott as Italian officer
• Julian Sherrier as 2nd Italian officer
• Robert Bruce as Italian driver
• Bob Simmons as Mustapha
• Andreas Malandrinos as Italian cook
• Ernst Walder as German Corporal

The film was initially based on a 1954 novel of the same name by Ronald Kemp, but later received a different script unrelated to the novel with the exception of the title and the setting.{{Cite web |title=Tank Force |url=https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52758-TANK-FORCE?sid=85fb525b-5937-48ad-9b67-bcd41ca611e6&sr=2.95455&cp=1&pos=0 |access-date=2022-03-06 |website=catalog.afi.com}}"Display Ad 45 -- No Title" The Observer [London] 17 Oct 1954: 9.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article71673458 |title=NOVELS.. REVIEWED BY GORDON STEWART This school was tough |newspaper=The Argus |location=Melbourne|date=13 August 1955 |access-date=8 July 2016 |page=40 |via=National Library of Australia}}

Warwick Productions bought the film rights in 1955 and tried to get Montgomery Clift to star.{{Cite news|title='No Time to Die' Bought for Clift; Heflin Will Star in 'Distant Paths'|author=Schallert, Edwin|date=July 16, 1955|work=Los Angeles Times|page=15}} Sy Bartlett was assigned to write the script.{{Cite news|title=REPUBLIC TO FILM SERLING TV PLAY: Studio Acquires 'Taps on a Bugle,' Third Work Sold by Author of 'Patterns' |author=THOMAS M. PRYOR|date=July 16, 1955|work=New York Times|page=12}}

In March 1957 Merle Miller was hired to rewrite the script.{{Cite news|title=Of Local Origin|date=Mar 13, 1957|work=New York Times|page=25}} Then Richard Maibaum did a draft. The script eventually became about five Allied soldiers, two Englishmen, a Pole, an American and an Australian, who escape an Italian POW camp in the Second World War.

Alan Ladd, who had made several pictures for Warwick, was mentioned as a possibility as star.{{Cite news|title='No Time to Die' Likely for Ladd; Western Film Proposed for Brando |author=Schallert, Edwin|date=Mar 30, 1957|work=Los Angeles Times|page=B3}} In April 1957 Terence Young arrived in Hollywood to find two American leading men for the film.{{Cite news|title='No Time to Die' Bids for Americans; Cooper Classic Soon to Start|author=Schallert, Edwin|date=Apr 18, 1957|work=Los Angeles Times|page=C13}} Van Johnson, who had just made a film with Young, was a leading contender.{{Cite news|title=Johnson Ponders London Film Role|author=Hopper, Hedda|date=May 31, 1957|work=Chicago Daily Tribune|page=a3}} Jeff Chandler turned down the role (and fee of $200,000).{{Cite news|title=Bernice Block Will Produce Shocker|author=Hopper, Hedda|date=Aug 15, 1957|work=Los Angeles Times|page=B8}}

In August 1957 Victor Mature signed a two-picture contract with Warwick, No Time to Die and The Man Inside.{{Cite news|title=STUDIO SUSPENDS KIM NOVAK PACT: Columbia Acts After She Refuses Paramount Role-- Debbie Reynolds to Star Nature Has Its Way|date=Aug 31, 1957|work=New York Times|page=18}}

The film was the first made by Warwick Films after it greatly cut back on its expenses. It was shot over eleven weeks starting 15 August.{{cite magazine|magazine=Kinematograph Weekly|url=https://archive.org/details/sim_kinematograph-weekly_1957-11-14_487_2622/page/26/mode/1up?|date=14 November 1957|page=26|first=Peter|last=Evans|title=Certainly Warwick has "No Time to Die"}} There were six weeks of location filming in the Libyan Desert, near Tripoli. The Queens Bays Tank Regiment assisted in production of the film.{{Cite news|title=MOVIELAND EVENTS: Mature, Genn Will Migrate to Desert|date=Sep 4, 1957|work=Los Angeles Times|page=C9}}{{cite magazine|first=Peter|last=Evans|title=Studio round up|magazine=Kinematograph Weekly|url=https://archive.org/details/sim_kinematograph-weekly_1957-09-05_485_2612/page/163/mode/1up|date=5 September 1957|page=164}}

No Time to Die featured authentic war time Cromwell tanks as well as post-war Centurions and Charioteers as both British and German tanks. In the opening battle Leo Genn commands an AEC armoured car and wears the beret of the Cherry Pickers.

Sean Kelly was a South African actor who had been signed by Warwick to a seven-year contract.Newcomers Win Capital Film Breaks; Robinson to Enact Mad Bomber

Schallert, Edwin. Los Angeles Times 9 Feb 1957: B3.

It was the last in a seven-picture commitment between Warwick and Columbia.{{cite magazine|magazine=Variety|title=Warwick Shrinks Overhead and Sked|url=https://archive.org/details/variety208-1957-10/page/n249/mode/1up|date=23 October 1957|page=4}}

When the film was initially released in the United States, it was 20 minutes shorter than the version released in the United Kingdom.

Kinematograph Weekly listed it as being "in the money" at the British box office in 1958.{{cite magazine|magazine=Kinematograph Weekly|date=18 December 1958|first=Josh|last=Billings|page=7|title=Others in the Money|url=https://archive.org/details/sim_kinematograph-weekly_1958-12-18_500_2679/page/7/mode/1up?}}

Variety wrote "as a routine adventure yarn, it will probably get by with undiscriminatirig audiences. But the dialog; situations, artwork and acting are all unremittingly artificial, with even the presence of Victor Mature as star having little to make this piece acceptable to American audiences."{{cite magazine|magazine=Variety|title=No Time to Die|url=https://archive.org/details/variety210-1958-05/page/n23/mode/1up?|date=7 May 1958|page=22}}

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "No Time to Die is a briskly efficient escape drama pitched on the breathless level of a Boy's Own Paper adventure. The action is swift, lively and implausible. The reasons given for Thatcher's enlistment in the British Army are imaginative – "I threw a bomb at Goebbels " – and, under the circumstances, Victor Mature acquits himself well, adding a novel touch to Army dialogue with such orders as "C'mon, let's hit the road", and "Nice goin', cousin". The desert photography is extremely impressive."{{Cite journal |date=1 January 1958 |title=No Time to Die |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/1305824991/AE0898B3321A450CPQ/3 |journal=The Monthly Film Bulletin |volume=25 |issue=288 |pages=77 |via=ProQuest}}

The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 2/5 stars, writing: "Set during the campaign in the Libyan desert, American hunk Victor Mature plays an American who serves as a sergeant in the British army. He organises an escape from an Italian PoW camp and is then captured and tortured by a shifty sheikh in league with the Nazis. Every racial stereotype in the book stands to attention as Mature lurches from one heroic deed to the next, culminating in a joust with a Panzer tank."{{Cite book |title=Radio Times Guide to Films |publisher=Immediate Media Company |year=2017 |isbn=9780992936440 |edition=18th |location=London |pages=667}}

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In British Sound Films: The Studio Years 1928–1959 David Quinlan rated the film as "mediocre", writing: "Laughable war film; script is dreaful."{{Cite book |last=Quinlan |first=David |title=British Sound Films: The Studio Years 1928–1959 |publisher=B.T. Batsford Ltd. |year=1984 |isbn=0-7134-1874-5 |location=London |pages=354}}

The 25th James Bond film, 2021's No Time to Die, shares a title with this film, which was directed by Terence Young, produced by Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli, and written by Richard Maibaum,Republic to Film Serling TV Play: Studio Acquires 'Taps on a Bugle,' Third Work Sold by Author of 'Patterns' By Thomas M. Pryor, Special to The New York Times. (1923–Current file) 16 July 1955: 12.Schallert, Edwin. "'No Time to Die' Bids for Americans; Cooper Classic Soon to Start," Los Angeles Times (1923–Current File) 18 Apr 1957: C13. the original director, producer and writer of the James Bond films.

{{Reflist}}

• [https://collections-search.bfi.org.uk/web/Details/ChoiceFilmWorks/150035571 No Time to Die] at the British Film Institute
• {{IMDb title|0052271}}
• {{TCMDb title|18210}}
• {{AFI film|id=52758|title=Tank Force}}

{{Terence Young}}

{{Irving Allen}}

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Category:1958 films

Category:North African campaign films

Category:British war films

Category:Columbia Pictures films

Category:CinemaScope films

Category:Films with screenplays by Richard Maibaum

Category:Films shot in Libya

Category:Films about the British Army

Category:1950s English-language films

Category:1950s British films

Category:Films scored by Kenneth V. Jones