Frankenheimer decided he would spectate at the endurance classic instead, which in turn led to him attending various Formula 1 races. According to Charles Champlin’s John Frankenheimer – A Conversation, which was published in 1995, the kernel of an idea was formed. Frankenheimer said: ‘‘I called Eddie Lewis, my partner at the time, and said: ‘Eddie, I’ve got a great idea for a movie about grand prix racing,’ and I took him to the grand prix at Watkins Glen, New York. Eddie said: “It’s not exactly my cup of tea, but I can see what attracted you to it.” He asked me what we should call it and I didn’t know. Eddie said: ‘Let’s give it the working title of Grand Prix.’

“We hired Robert Alan Aurthur, whom I had worked with in my live television days, to do the script and we had Steve McQueen. That was a done deal. Then fate got in the way.” By which he meant ‘The Cooler King’ had taken an instant dislike to Lewis, the film’s producer, during their initial meeting. He blew hot and cold on the idea before flying to Taiwan to make The Sand Pebbles. He then announced that he would do a motor racing movie of his own alongside The Great Escape director John Sturges.

Frankenheimer toyed with making a film about the relationship between a driver and his mechanic, before deciding to adapt Robert Daley’s book The Cruel Sport instead, and went so far as to hire the sometime New York Times journalist to prepare a script. His screenplay was subsequently reworked by Aurthur, whose dialogue was in turn given a polish by an uncredited Bill Hanley – an Emmy-winning scriptwriter. Nevertheless, some quotes in the film were lifted near verbatim from Daley’s original potboiler.

“Listen, inviting an actor to drive in Formula 1 is like asking Phil Hill to play Hamlet”

The plot centres on Pete Aron, a talented driver who nevertheless has been without a win for three years. The American loses his seat with the Jordan-BRM team following a clash with team-mate Scott Stoddard during the Monaco Grand Prix, the Briton being seriously injured and facing the possibility of never racing again. Aron finds comfort in the arms of Stoddard’s wife, a former model who is bored of being married to a man who lives in the shadow of his dead brother, 1958 world champion Roger Stoddard.

Corsican Jean-Pierre Sarti, meanwhile, is eager to bow out of the sport with a third drivers’ title. But he is locked in a loveless marriage and is distracted by magazine editor Louise Frederickson, who is on assignment following the grand prix circus. Aron misses the following race and is obliged to act as a TV pundit, but finds a career lifeline with a Japanese team funded by industrialist (and former World War II fighter pilot) Izo Yamura. He proceeds to win the next two rounds. By this time, Stoddard is back on track and in the hunt for the championship. Following the British Grand Prix, four drivers – Aron, Stoddard, Sarti and cocky Sicilian hot-shoe Nino Barlini – are in with a shot at the title at the season finale at Monza.

As the flag falls, Sarti is left behind at the start after stalling, but then sets about scything his way through the pack. He appears set to realise his ambition and leave the sport as the champion, only to depart the banked circuit and perish in a dramatic – and fiery – crash. His Manetta-Ferrari team-mate Barlini is then withdrawn from the race out of respect, leaving Aron to pip Stoddard to the title. Stoddard, however, is sanguine in defeat. He takes a prize of his own after he wins back his estranged wife. The end.

The role of Aron went to James Garner, despite Frankenheimer objecting to his casting. After McQueen bailed, he homed in on Robert Redford, who was still a few years away from stardom. But MGM demanded Garner be given the role. He was joined by Yves Montand as Sarti, Eva Marie Saint as Frederickson, Antonio Sabàto as Barlini (in only his second-ever film role), and ‘yé-yé girl’ Françoise Hardy as his love interest. Frankenheimer had spotted the pouty chanteuse while visiting London’s Scotch Club and offered the 22-year-old the part on the spot.

British theatre actor Brian Bedford, whom Frankenheimer reckoned was the best performer of the lot, was cast as Stoddard, with Jessica Walter playing his wife. The brilliant Toshiro Mifune played Izo Yamura in his first English-speaking role (he learned his dialogue phonetically, only to be dubbed in post-production by ‘The Man of a Thousand Voices’, Paul Frees). But it was Frankenheimer’s visual dexterity that set Grand Prix on a pedestal among racing flicks. There was to be no back projection trickery or stock footage here. He demanded realism.

At least one title claimed in period that he had initially planned on fielding his own Formula 1 squad. He would shoot exterior and in-car footage during each round of the 1966 F1 World Championship. But even MGM baulked at the cost, despite granting Frankenheimer an eight-figure budget. The production team then tapped each constructor for technical drawings, so that the special effects department could build replicas of each car. None were forthcoming. So Plan C was put into action, with the Jim Russell racing school adapting its fleet of Lotus Formula Juniors to resemble grand prix cars. A pair of genuine F1 cars – a 1.5-litre-era BRM and a Lotus Type 25/33 – were also acquired, the latter appearing on-screen as a Yamura, while a Shelby Cobra and Ford GT40 were employed as camera cars.

Former Formula 1 world champion Phil Hill was on hand as a technical adviser and camera car driver, with Jo Bonnier, Mike Spence, Richie Ginther and Graham Hill similarly making fleeting appearances in the finished film. Intriguingly, Graham Hill had been passionately against cameras being used in the races proper, so much so that there had been a blanket ban on their adoption. However, the Londoner and several other members of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association developed selective amnesia about this on learning of the film’s substantial backing (John Surtees resigned from the group in disgust).

More than 20 active or retired star drivers participated in the shoot, with Bob Bondurant tasked with whipping Garner into shape. He told Motor Sport in 2016: “James was a great natural driver. He listened and took direction very well. We started in a [Ford Shelby Mustang] GT350, moved on to a 289 Cobra and then a Formula Junior. Later on, we borrowed a BRM F1 car and he took a few laps in that as well.” The other ‘drivers’ were trained by Jim Russell, but none cut the mustard.

The 45-year-old Montand liked fast road cars but struggled to adapt to racing fare, while Sabàto was big on bravado but had no talent. Bedford, meanwhile, had yet to pass his driving test. From most accounts, and accounts aren’t difficult to come by, he would bristle whenever his lack of driving prowess was discussed. He came out with the deathless remark: “Listen, inviting an actor to drive in Formula 1 is like asking Phil Hill to play Hamlet.” The line eventually made it into the film’s promotional material.

Incredibly, the shoot began in May 1966 and finished in early October. The film was released in the US on December 21; in the UK in March 1967. That said, the Grand Prix crew didn’t endear themselves to the locals while shooting in Monaco for 15 days. The director recalled in John Frankenheimer – A Conversation: “When we did the picture, half of Monte Carlo was owned by [Aristotle] Onassis and half by the Grimaldis, Prince Rainier’s family. So when the Grimaldis opened up the road for us, Onassis would close his, and vice versa. Therefore, we could only operate on a mile or so of road, then we’d have to stop until the next day.

“We had merchants staging strikes. Unbelievable stuff. We were allowed on the track for two hours prior to the Formula 1 practice, so we closed down all the roads. What nobody anticipated was the massive traffic around Monte Carlo. Guess who was caught in the middle of it and missed the first practice? Colin Chapman, who built the Lotus racers, and his team. Imagine how that went over. ‘Yer bloody film!’ He’d been against it from the beginning anyway. We didn’t get much co-operation from Lotus.”

It also didn’t help that the set-up shot in which Stoddard’s car was fired out of a hydrogen cannon dubbed ‘Big Blue’ took an age to perfect. Footage also exists of an uncharacteristically uptight Garner being fished out of the Mediterranean time and again after his ‘car’ had been sent into the drink. Then there was the small matter of placing bulky 65mm Cinerama cameras onto cars that required a degree of fabrication mastery. Much of this was perfected by former Cunningham racer, Bill Frick.

Most of the other circuits used during the shoot were on the 1966 grand prix schedule aside from Clermont-Ferrand, which had made its first appearance on the world championship calendar in 1965 and substituted for Reims. Conspicuously absent from the shoot was the Nürburgring, the McQueen/Sturges rival production Day of the Champion having the exclusive rights to the venue. Matters spilled over at Spa when they shot footage in beautiful sunshine, only for it to rain next time out. Cue a thousand extras being doused with fire hoses for continuity purposes, only for the sun to reappear. Frankenheimer had a brainwave while editing the footage. He added a thunderclap to illustrate the transition from dry to wet.

At Brands Hatch, the Ferrari squad didn’t arrive due to a metal workers’ strike at the factory in Modena. To maintain continuity, privateer Chris Lawrence was persuaded to liberally apply red house paint to his Pearce-Ferrari (a 1962 Cooper with a 3-litre Ferrari engine) with a brush so that it could double for Sarti’s car in the race and during the following day’s shoot. Then a representative of the film’s underwriters, Lloyd’s of London, made an unscheduled appearance.

He was reputedly aghast on spotting actors aboard glorified sledges being towed behind the GT40 camera car. He was even less happy on seeing Garner blatting around at unabated speed on his own. So much so, the insurance policy was withdrawn on the spot. It took a lot of persuasion on MGM’s part to get it reinstated. On the plus side, Enzo Ferrari changed his stance on the film after seeing early rushes. So much so, he allowed Frankenheimer to film inside the factory.

The show must go on, and it did. Frankenheimer employed ally Lionel Lindon as his principal cinematographer for the film. Lindon deserved a degree of veneration for being among the bravest members of the team, and often found himself hanging out of a helicopter during action sequences. He also devised and edited the in-car footage.

“‘We went to your movie. Pretty good picture.’ Coming from Steve McQueen, it was high praise”

One of the standout features of the film was the use of multiple images shown on a split screen. This was the work of graphic designer Saul Bass, although the director claimed in The Cinema of John Frankenheimer: “I got the idea from Francis Thompson’s film To be Alive! at the New York World’s Fair… Grand Prix was suited to the split screens… What we were trying to do was to show other events taking place, but, if you wanted to, you could keep on looking at the race.”

Throw in a rousing score by in-demand composer Maurice Jarre (father of future synth-music pioneer Jean-Michel) and Grand Prix had it made. It racked up three Academy Awards and recouped MGM’s investment and more. It wasn’t universally liked by reviewers, though. Bosley Crowther mused in The New York Times: “As it stands, or as it runs, this three-hour picture about the professional and romantic rivalries of four drivers making the grand-prix circuit in the season of 1966 is a smashing and thundering compilation of racing footage, shot superbly.” Stephen Faber, writing for Film Quarterly, described the non-racing scenes as “…awfully boring”.

The same title also ran effusive quotes from Stirling Moss and Jim Clark, which was strange given both were allied to Race of the Champion, which was never completed. It’s worth pointing out that far greater emphasis was placed on Sarti’s role in the final edit, the director admitting in John Frankenheimer – A Conversation: “What happened when I cut the movie was that I gave it to Montand, so the movie became kind of a downer. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. It was supposed to be Garner’s movie, but Montand was the one you had sympathy for.”

As for ‘Pete Aron’, he loved the finished article. He stated in The Garner Files by Jon Winokur: “Grand Prix was a high point in my film career, and I owe the whole experience to Steve McQueen for dropping out of the picture. Steve’s son Chad finally dragged him to see it. I ran into them on our street as they were coming home. Steve stopped and said his first words to me in two years: ‘Well, we went to your movie.’ ‘Yeah, what’d you think?’ ‘Pretty good picture. Pretty good.’ Coming from Steve, it was high praise.”

Garner added by way of a parting shot: “The movie captured the beauty of Formula 1 racing in its golden age, before it became commercialised and high-tech. It looked real, sounded real and felt real. At the end you felt as though you’d been in the race. I think it’s the greatest auto racing picture ever made.” Who are we to argue to the contrary?