Filming “Le Mans”, one of the best racing car movies ever made. In this race, one of the spectators

The Ford GT 40 of Belgian driver Jacky Ickx and the Porsche 908 Long Tail of german driver Hans Hermann, were so close one of each other before 23 hours of racing and with only one hour remaining from the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans, that not even the most experts could predict who would win the race.

Finally, was Jacky Ickx who crossed the checkered flag line just only less than ninety yards from Hermann with the sad eyes from his co-driver, Frenchman Gerard Larrousse.

In this race, one of the spectators was American actor Steve Mc Queen, together with many of the Solar Productions film crew, as finally he was going to start one of the projects he always dreamed: be the star of the Le Mans movie.

Everything was being taken care of for one year in advance: best locations, contacts with drivers and teams, organization, etc.

John von Newman was a Porsche distributor in California and had a small team competing in Can Am series, and at the end of the 1969 season, the team was looking for work, while Steve Mc Queen was looking for a team and they had the entire infrastructure that the American actor was looking for.

Von Newman suggested to Mc Queen to buy a Porsche 908 Long Tail that was in storage at the Porsche factory in Germany, and that’s what they did. Soon, the team converted the 908 in a spider short version, known as “Flunder”.

Steve Mc queen took part of the Sport Car Club of America event in Holtville at the beginning of 1970, with not much to crowd about, and in the next race at Riverside, the gearbox blew. Finally, he won at Phoenix, but also he set the lap record.

A week later, he was driving a motorcycle at the Lake Elsinore Grand Prix, but at the beginning of the race, he hit a dip in the track with his Husqvarna, and le lnded in the crowd. And his left foot had to be put in a cast, with Sebring only two weeks ahead.

Steve tested the Porsche to see if he was able to race, and he did it despite his injuries.

It was very important for him to be there, as he was going to meet many drivers that Solar Productions had their eye on, and Mc Queen was going to meet them.

In the previous days of the race, while practicing, he was nearly three seconds lower than his team mate, the well –known driver Peter Revson. The car qualified in the fifteenth position, but the surprise came during the race.

With twenty minutes to go, they were in second place behind the Gulf Porsche 917 of amazing Mexican Pedro Rodriguez and Finnish Leo Kinnunen when suddenly, the leader broke its right front suspension and with less than fifteen minutes to finish the race, Mc Queen was the leader…buy not for a long time, as with three minutes to go, Mario Andretti took the leadership and Revson-Mc Queen arrived in second position at Sebring.

At the end of April, the traditional Le Mans test were held and the car was modified to accommodate 35 mm professional cameras, one that would be mounted in the middle front of the Porsche 908 and two others in the rear.

It was called the “rolling camera car” and Steve expected to drive the car, but when Cinema Center told him that they would give up with the Le Mans movie project if he was going to participate in the famous race, Herbert Linge drove the car.

Cinema Center was not going to run any risk letting Mc Queen to race at the Mans, with the possibility of being hurt or even losing the star in an accident. But at least they agreed to let him do his own stunts in the new Porsche 917 that the production bought, in the stage sequences.

Ferrari with their 512 S and Porsche with the 917’s were the favorites, while many powerful Matras, Alfa Romeo and Lolas with their T-70, would take part of the race with great drivers.

Porsche showed to be the most powerful, bringing three 917 with the Gulf-John Wyer team, Porsche- Salzburg with another set of three 917 and Martini Racing Team as the other powerful team.

On the opposite side, Ferrari with a squadra of eleven 512 models, four 512 s from the official team, three from Scuderia Filipinetti, two from NART (North American Racing Team) and one from Ecurie Nationale Belge and the other one, from the yellow Spanish Escuderia Montjuich . This was the very same car that arrived in fifth place overall in the Buenos Aires 1000 Kilometers with Spaniard Jose Maria Juncadella and argentine Carlos Alberto Pairetti.

In order to have live footage from the race, Sola Productions entered the Mc Queen Porsche 908” camera car” with Jonathan Williams and Herbert Linge. With both drivers taking lessons on the camera operations control panel.

Due to the fatal crash of John Woolfe’s Porsche 917 in the very first lap of the 1969 Le Mans edition, the starting would be different for the 1970 race, as drivers should be already inside their cars.

Solar Productions also purchased a Ford GT 40 and took off the roof to use it as a camera car and they did a lap filming with all the crowd just before the race start so, the film would capture all the grandstands crowded, something that should cost tons of money to reproduce for the film as they should hire two hundred thousand extras to recreate the scene.

The british icon Vic Elford took the lead of the race but soon, was Siffert in the first place, but just for a few minutes as Elford’s 917 Long tail had better aerodynamics and in the long straight, Elford was again in the lead.

Herbert Linge was selected to be the first driver at the start of the race in Solar Production’s Porsche 908, having the instructions to left running all the cameras for the complete first lap. Then, at their discretion they could select the images to film. But curiously, the complete capacity of the cameras rolling continuously was only around six minutes, so at the end of second lap, Linge went to pits to change cameras, as planned. Of course, the primary objective for Solar Productions drivers was to capture the scenes for the film.

Finally, it was the Porsche 917 short Tail driven by Hans Hermann and Richard Attwood who won the race. But the hard work for the “Le Mans “ film team started early in the spring of 1970, when the production manager, Hubert Froehlich arrived to Le Mans, in charge of many filming locations at the same time and to find the correct location for base of operations. He dad already many prefabricated buildings that brought from Switzerland and assembled in a land just one kilometer from the pits and grandstands.

Hubert Froehlich’s right- hand man was eighteen-year-old Peter Samuelson, whose family operated the already famous Samuelson’s film rental company.

The film should need lots of extras and they were paid nearly a hundred francs a day, which was good money. So, suddenly, many companies in the Le Mans town noticed that lots of their own employees were calling sick, but truly, they were acting as extras and this was trouble for the local companies.

So, they had a meeting with the Mayor and exposed the problem, so, then another meeting was held with Solar Productions and they were being asked to reduce the day pay to sixty five francs, so it was close to what a worker should be paid in its own work.

But the people in the town was very creative as they were punching their time cards and then left their working places to work as extras in the film, and at the end of the day, they returned to their jobs to punch out.

Finally, Solar agreed to ask the extras to punch in many times a day, to be sure that they were working as extras all day long and not leaving their permanent jobs.

The budget for the film was more than seven million dollars.

Steve Mc Queen was agreed to play the roll of Gulf Porsche’s driver Michael Delaney, while veteran actor Ronald Leigh Hunt should be the Gulf Porsche manager David Townsend, the fictitious John Wyer, in real life.

Siegfried Rauch should portrait the roll of Driver Eric Stahler from Ferrari, Angelo Infanti as Lugo Abratte, Fred Haltiner as Johann Ritter, Michele Scalera as Vito Scalise, Jean-claude Bercq as Paul-Jacques Dion and Alf Bell as Tommy Hopkins.

The actors were asked to use their driving suits at all times, so they could give to them a used look and many important people from the racing world used to visit the set. One of the most important drivers to dropped by was five time formula One Champion Juan Manuel Fangio .

Novelist Denne Bart Petitclerc, The screenplay recalled on Harry Cleiner and another third writer was hired, John Kelley, wrote the original script.

The Porsche 908 of Solar Productions, during the race, should shot seventy thousand feet of film, plus several crew with other cameras rolling at the same time capturing crowds, pit stops, other cars, firefighters, police, grandstands, etc. So here there were another twenty five thousand feet of footage.

For the staged footage, it was necessary to have the cars that actually raced so the production contacted many of the teams that would race at Le Mans, to arrange the lease of their cars. Swiss driver Joseph Siffert owned many cars so he was contacted and also he was asked to find other cars that the production needed. In less than half a month, Siffert bought many cars and also he purchased one Porsche 917, being the agreement between Siffert and Solar that he would hire the cars at five thousand dollars the week. During the complete production of the movie, Jo Siffert made more than one hundred thousand dollars in renting his cars for the set.

Apart from Siffert, British driver David Piper leased to Solar his Porsche 917 and Lola T-70. The production also leased two cars from Scuderia Filipinetti, a Matra 650 and an alfa romeo 33/3.

Also Porsche let Solar to have the Salzburg long tail that was driven in the race by Vic “Quick” Elford. Forty-one drivers worked in the production, as were listed on the Le Mans movie credits. All of them great races, as Vic Elford, Kurt Ahrens, Derek Bell, David Piper, Jo Siffert, Herbert Muller, Masten Gregory, Brian Redman, Gerard Larrousse, Jonathan Williams, Claude Ballot-Lena, and many other champions.

It was hard to be a racer and not to drive fast for the shooting sequences, but that happened to Masten Gregory while driving the Autodelta Alfa Romeo 33/3. His racing driver instinct made him to pass other cars while shooting, and this was not as the script was written.

Since during the actual race rained, lots of sequences needed to be recreated with this wet conditions. The forecast were being closely followed, so if rain was announced, then the wet sequences should be filmed. But sometimes, giant panels with sprinklers suspended by cranes were used to recreate the light of rainy weather. Also water tank trucks were used to wet the track, so everything would look like in the actual Le Mans race.

Many companies were contacted in order to provide with hats, shirts, jackets, umbrellas, etc, to the crews and extras, as ELF, Shell, Gulf, etc.

The film was a good promotion for Heuer watches, as when Jack Heuer, the president of the company, learned that Le Mans movie was being filmed, he approached to producers and offered to help with the finance of the film, and then, the Heuer logo appeared in the cars, and even in drivers suits.

Two big accidents were in the script of the movie and special effects specialist Malcolm Smith was hired. He used Lola T-70 bodywork that transformed into a Ferrari 512 alike and placed many servo motors that allowed Smith to drive the car by remote control while a dummy as seated behind the wheel.

During filming of the accident sequence, the car went out of control and the car smashed into the guardrail. As the sequence could not be filmed due to the damaged, it was decided that was easier to built another car instead of repairing the damaged one.

Finally, the accident was filed again, with a slow motion of 120 frames per second. For the second accident, another Lola, dressed as a Porsche 917 was used. Thirteen cameras were used for this footage.

Again joysticks with remote control were used and the destruction of the car was very realistic, but when the tail section lifted, for the connoisseur, the yellow center body of the Lola could be seen.

But one unexpected accident occurred while filming, when David Piper suddenly hit the guardrail and injured one of his legs showing triple fracture, but so severe that it had to be amputated below the knee.

The film was finished two months past from its original date, and with an extra cost of one million, five hundred thousand additional dollars in the production costs.

The total amount of footage was 450,000 feet of film that now had to be edited. As a Porsche 917 won the actual race, it was decided also that in the film, the 917 would be the winner.

The music was a important matter for this movie, and they hired Michel Legrand . His musical score was released by Columbia to be launched together with the Avant Premiere of the film, in June 1971 in Indianapolis.

Steve Mc Queen was a car and motorcycle guy, and when he died, his motorcycle collection had two hundred and twenty units, plus his classic cars. In November 1984 all his collection was auctioned .