Stanley Baker "This Sporting Life" but had to drop out when "Guns of Navarone" went over schedule. She says Baker never regretted losing the part of Bond to Sean Connery but regretted not making "This Sporting Life". Baker wanted to move into production, and to this end formed his own company, Diamond Films with Endfield. They developed a script about the Battle of Rorke's Drift written by Endfield and John Prebble. While making "Sodom and Gomorrah" Baker struck up a relationship with that film's producer, Joseph E. Levine which enabled him to raise the $3 million budget for "Zulu" (1964), directed by
The Cruel Sea (1953 film) The Cruel Sea (1953 film) The Cruel Sea is a 1953 British war film starring Jack Hawkins, Donald Sinden, Denholm Elliott, Stanley Baker, Liam Redmond, Virginia McKenna and Moira Lister. The film, which was made by Ealing Studios seven years after the end of the Second World War, was directed by Charles Frend and produced by Leslie Norman. It is based on the best selling novel of the same name by former naval officer Nicholas Monsarrat, though the screenplay by Eric Ambler omits some of Monsarrat's grimmest moments. The film portrays the conditions in which the Battle of the Atlantic