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
Zulu (1964 film) made it, Cy Endfield and Stanley Baker, have done about as nifty a job of realizing on the formula as one could do." "Variety" praised the "intelligent screenplay" and "high allround standard of acting," concluding, "High grade technical qualities round off a classy production." Richard L. Coe of "The Washington Post" wrote that the film was "in the much-missed tradition of 'Beau Geste' and 'Four Feathers.' It has a restrained, leisurely tension, the heroics are splendidly stiff-upper-lip and such granite worthies as Stanley Baker and Jack Hawkins head the cast." Whitney Balliett of "The New Yorker" wrote that the film