From the Archives: ‘Gray Lady Down’ final scene filmed in San Diego 45 years ago

Filming began here 45 years ago this week for Universal Picture’s “Gray Lady Down,” a submarine disaster movie starring Charlton Heston, Stacy Keach and David Carradine. Union Theater Writer James Meade includes plot spoilers in this account of filming the movie’s final scene.

“Gray Lady Down” premiered in San Diego on March 3, 1978 in a special benefit showing for the Navy League.

From The San Diego Union, Thursday, Sept. 23, 1976:

By James Meade, Theater Writer

Motion picture production sometimes is sanest when it seems to be the most insane. Thus Mirisch Corp’s “Gray Lady Down” for Universal release began 57 days of production here this week shooting the movie’s final scene.

Movies are filmed according to the availability of sets and locations rather than in continuity. Thus characters may marry the first day of production not play the scene in which they meet for another 30 days.

“Gray Lady Down’s” final sequence has Charlton Heston as the commander of a foundered nuclear submarine emerging from a Deep Submergence Rescue Vessel (DSRV-1) aboard a submarine rescue ship, the Pigeon deck by their rescuers, Stacy Keach portraying Heston’s submarine flotilla commander, and Navy submarine rescue experts.

It has been 17 years since the Mirisch brothers (Walter, Marvin and the late Harold) coproduced “Some Like IT Hot” with Billy Wilder at Hotel del Coronado. The most recent Mirisch production is “Midway.”

“I suppose I’m going through my naval period,” said Walter Mirish in an interview. “It’s coincidental really that I found this exciting story about a submarine that sinks and the herculean efforts made to rescue the crew using such modern techniques.”

The DSRV-1 is a 50-foot vessel that goes 5,000 feet undersea, where water pressure is 2,500 pounds to the square inch. Mirish prizes a styrofoam cup that was attached to the exterior of the DSRV-1 during a dive. When the vessel surfaced, the cup had been compressed to the size of a shot glass.

Keach primarily has been a stage actor whose recent pictures have been English, including the excellent “Conduct Unbecoming,” in which he was the only American cast member.

“I’m beginning to feel a bit of an Anglophile,” Keach said, “so it’s a wonderful experience to find myself in the midst of the U.S. Navy. I feel much more secure in a way.”

“Gray Lady Down” is unusual in that the final scene filmed this week at sea is the only one which Heston and Keach share, although they converse considerably via radio telephone.

“I call this move ‘Airport Underwater’,” Keach joked. “I’m trying to get Heston up instead of down.”

David Carradine, who plays the maverick operator of a deep-water vessel called the Mole, has no scene with Heston whom he helps save. Carradine does have scenes with Keach.

It has been a long climb-in, climb-out of the DSRV-1 for Heston with director David Greene shooting various angles of the rescue reunion scene.

“Actors working in films discipline themselves to somehow keep it fresh, keep it sharp,” said Heston, who runs two miles every morning to keep in shape — “I hate every step of the way but I believe in pain.”

Meanwhile, what producer Mirisch calls “That great electrician in the sky,” the sun, is sinking in the west. Director Greene is trying to get all his shots before not only the light is lost but also the location, the Pigeon due to weigh anchor for Seattle the next morning, not to return for a month.

If all the scenes are not gotten, a second unit must return to San Diego later to film the DSRV-1 emerging from the water into the catamaran Pigeon’s cradle. “An expensive nuisance,” Mirisch comments.

His exhausting chores over until they start again after dinner planning the next day’s shooting, director Greene is ready to talk about is concept of “Gray Lady Down” and disaster films in general.

“Charlton Heston has been in disaster films before but I wasn’t connected with those films,” Green said. “I feel very strongly that this — though it is a disaster film — is not like those hokey disaster films you’ve seen before.

“We’re approaching this from a point of view of complete honesty. We’ve gone into it with the Navy and made sure the details are right. I’ve got a documentary cameraman here and we’ll show it the way it really is.

“In addition to being a suspense film, it’s also the story of relationships between those in the submarine and the rescuers. Disaster film it is, entertainment it is, but it’s approached from a completely honest point of view. There’s nothing hokey in it. I’m sure the audiences will see the difference.”

“It’s not a piece of the Marines are coming nor charging through a town on a horse at peril to one’s self,” Greene said of the sacrifice Carradine makes in the film to save the sub crew. “It’s a situation where if you saw a lot of men on the verge of death, you might try to save them. That’s what Carradine does.

“He saves them not because he’s a hero-hero with a Hollywood light in his eyes and his hair flowing in the breeze. It’s because he’s a realist and he’s an honest-to-God, down-to-earth sailor. He sees his buddies will die and he can save them.

“I’m very excited about it,” said Greene, a veteran director but doing his first major Hollywood film. “I’ve doen films I’ve thought were big but this is the biggest. I know I’m up at bat and I’ve got to hit a few homeruns.”

“Gray Lady Down” will continue shooting here; four days at sea aboard the landing ship Cayuga (LST-1186) two days at the Cayuga’s berth at North Island, and two days ashore at North Island, on a beach and at the Pigeon’s berth.

“Airport ‘77,” here for nine days, has returned to Universal Studios. Next week, it will not be “East Lynne” but next month it will be another Universal location here, “MacArthur,” starring Gregory Peck. Apparently producers have decided that audiences have had it with putdown movies and want to see heroic action in which the United States wins a few.