Raoul Walsh was a sort of ‘press-on-regardless’ director, really tough guy, and I had to supervise, or I was his Art Director to... for the attack on the walls of Troy, we had to build enormous towers, which were set alight. And we had, sort of, built scaling ladders, which had something like a 9-inch tree trunk on either side, but to be sure that they fell in the same place we used to sink concrete blocks into the ground, and hinged these enormous [ladders]… so that they all would fall in the same direction. But they didn't.

And... well, it was a disaster in many ways because the heat given off by these blazing towers, attacking tower, the camera crews just went off, you see, and there was general panic, and the ladders came down and some of them, most of them, fortunately, where they were supposed to, but some didn't, and some poor Italian extras were very badly hurt, so we had a continuous ambulance service.

And there were also political things, they didn't like an American director. There were immediately sort of demonstrations and so on, and it wasn't very pleasant, but having said that we... I learnt a lot. I loved working with all these architects in... at Cinecittà. And... so I had really a... a very good time.

But it didn't end that well because we had six fire engines from the Rome Fire Department standing by when we were doing all those flames, shooting, and to be there when we were having lunch, you know, and we had lunch at the Commissariat at Cinecittà, and in the middle of lunch somebody came racing in, and said, 'The set is on fire'.

So... the fire engines had also their lunch, and so had to rush out, you see, and try and extinguish... it was... and, the heat given off, I mean you could see it in Rome, was unbelievable, and the whole bloody set was burned down! Fortunately we... we had finished most of the sort of first unit shooting and I had to build some sort of cutting piece, as I didn't have to rebuild the whole set, but it was a very good experience.