Sahara

Details

Release year: 1943

Storyline

After the fall of Tobruk in 1942, during the Allied retreat in the Libyan desert, an American tank picks-up a motley group of survivors but they face advancing Germans and a lack of water.

Top credits

Awards

0 wins & 3 nominations

Did you know

• For much of the production, the cast and crew were based in Brawley, CA, a small town about 40 miles from the filming location. At the time, Brawley offered little in terms of evening diversions, so Humphrey Bogart hosted many of his colleagues in his suite at the Planter's Hotel. Other cast members described Bogart as outgoing, generous and an adept bartender, but the late-night drinking meant that Bogart arrived on set hung over and quarrelsome. The behavior led to clashes with director Zoltan Korda.

• Humphrey Bogart had signed a new contract with Warner Brothers and one of the perks of his new deal was that he was allowed to act in one film per year outside of his home studio. He quite liked Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, and decided he would enjoy working on a Columbia-produced film. Bogart's friendly relationship with Cohn was noteworthy, as many members of the film industry found Cohn to be notoriously unpleasant and abrasive. Bogart's decision to work for Columbia, even in a one-film-per-year deal, was massive for the studio, which lacked the star power of its rivals. This film marked the first of several collaborations between Bogart and Columbia, at the rate of one per year. While he was on loan to Columbia, Bogart was the studio's biggest star.

• Kurt Kreuger said that in the scene where he tried to escape back to his lines with the Sudanese sergeant (Rex Ingram) in pursuit, Ingram caught him and pressed his face into the sand to kill him, Kreuger almost passed out due to lack of air.

User reviews

Technical specs

Sound mix

Mono

Aspect ratio

1.37 : 1

Color

Black and White