Made between the Sanders adventures Death Drums Along the River (1963) and Coast of Skeletons (1965), the stand-alone programmer Mozambique (1964) is the most entertaining of writer-producer Harry Alan Towers’s early-to-mid-sixties forays into African intrigue. American actor Steve Cochran, a former Warner Brothers heavy, stars as Brad Webster, a down-on-his-luck pilot looking for work in charmingly shabby Lisbon, but understandably finding himself on a “blacklist” after crashing a plane and killing his passengers. Thrown into jail after getting into a brawl in a bar, Webster has little choice but to accept, at the authorities’ insistence, a mysterious job opportunity in Portugal’s East African colony Mozambique. Cochran is perfect as the tough and likable but damaged protagonist, greatly enhancing the movie’s hardboiled personality. Joining Webster on his journey to the “Capital of Hell”, as the film’s poster dubs their destination, is Christina Sindstrom (Danish sexpot Vivi Bach), a naïve singer whose nightclub gig turns out to be a lure to white slavery. Webster, meanwhile, finds himself smuggling medical supplies to Zanzibar as he investigates the sinister doings of his employers, does his best to protect Christina, and finds himself the prime suspect in a murder. Rounding out the expectedly cosmopolitan cast are Swiss actor Paul Hubschmid as Portuguese police official Commaro, German Hildegard Knef as femme fatale Ilona Valdez, and Afrikaner Gert van den Bergh as “The Arab”.

Welcome bits of Southern African color include a drums-and-loincloths nightclub act, a snake-in-the-cockpit scare, and a picturesque climactic sequence filmed at Victoria Falls Bridge at the border between what were then still the British protectorate of Northern Rhodesia and the colony of Southern Rhodesia. Despite the story’s Mozambican setting, much of the film was shot around Durban, South Africa, as camera operator Ronnie Maasz recalls in his memoir A Cast of Shadows. “A whole book could be written about Harry Alan Towers” and his “varied and checkered career”, Maasz relates: “He frequently raised the monies for these [films] in foreign parts, shooting the film in whichever country had financed it. He also rapidly became known for his propensity to be a little tardy in paying his bills but usually found the funds before things got too difficult.” [1] Offering an example of Towers’s penchant for producing by the seat of his pants, Maasz reveals that shooting on Mozambique was “delayed by the arrival of the hotel manager, demanding to know why we were using his ballroom to shoot in. The trifling matter of obtaining his permission had apparently been overlooked.” “Hotel managers being child’s play to Harry,” however, “the man’s arm was taken affectionately and Harry, talking animatedly, led him away, appearing five minutes later and instructing us to proceed.” [2] “A certain amount of further consternation requiring more of Harry’s diplomatic skills arose when certain intimate articles of ladies underclothing were discovered flying like flags from Steve Cochran’s window,” Maasz adds humorously: “Once again the management were mollified, but we wondered how much longer their patience would last. Harry had foreseen this and hurriedly moved Mr. Cochran to another hotel.” [3]

“‘El Sombrero’, as Harry had been nicknamed, had a habit of disappearing and then popping up again like the Demon King in a pantomime,” Maasz writes, giving additional indication of Towers’s personal flair, also noting that the producer’s “tie, as always, was neatly held in place by the obligatory gold tie clip.” [4] Though Maasz facetiously suggests, with little justification, that Towers may have plagiarized Casablanca (1942) in scripting Mozambique, it is more interesting to note that the story, with its plot elements of prostitution, international intrigue, spying, and a disgraced protagonist, contains faint hints of autobiography. While Brad Webster’s inclusion on a “blacklist” results from professional incompetence, the word choice also suggests the film’s otherwise unacknowledged Cold War context – a sphere with which Towers, early in his career, was rather intimately acquainted. Accused of being a Soviet spy in connection with the Profumo Affair, Towers purportedly operated a prostitution ring in New York in the early 1960s that employed Mariella Novotny, an associate of Christine Keeler, the call girl at the center of the British espionage scandal. The Towers operation allegedly compromised the United Nations and even ensnared John F. Kennedy, if Michael John Sullivan’s account in the book Presidential Passions is to be believed:

The President went to Maria’s [i.e., Mariella’s] apartment on Manhattan’s West 55th Street. Kennedy requested that two other prostitutes dressed as a doctor and a nurse join him and Maria for sex games. The President of the United States played the willing patient.

Luckily, the FBI was on to Towers, and he fled the country before any significant damage could be done. [5]

An Associated Press article of June 27, 1963, noted that “Harry Alan Towers, former executive of the British Broadcasting Corp., was charged with importing her [i.e., Novotny] into the United States to work as a prostitute. Towers, now 40 [actually 42], jumped bail and vanished behind the Iron Curtain.” [6] Stanley Meisler, in another article published that same day, reported:

In the United Nations case, FBI and Central Intelligence Agency agents are reported investigating at least 15 girls who are said to have worked in New York for Harry Alan Towers, a British Broadcasting Co. producer.

Towers jumped $10,000 bail in New York in 1961 after he was charged with importing Maria Novotny, [supposedly] a relative of President Antonin Novotny of Communist Czechoslovakia, into the United States to work as a prostitute. Miss Novotny later was convicted as a prostitute.

After he jumped bail, Towers showed up in Communist East Europe. [7]

Fred Shapiro, reporting for the Herald Tribune News Service, offered an update on Towers’s exploits in August, in the process accounting for why Towers landed in Africa to produce his Sanders vehicles and Mozambique:

Far from the Iron Curtain, British television producer and accused procurer Harry Alan Towers popped up in South Africa this week, hard at work on a movie.

Towers, who brushed off attempts to contact him directly, said his “past is a closed book, and I am entirely innocent of the charges brought against me.”

Specifically, these are federal Mann Act charges and New York State procuring charges resulting from his arrest March 3, 1961, in a plush apartment here with pretty, blonde Maria Novotny, whom prosecutors termed a $100 call girl. […]

From South Africa Wednesday, Towers said it is true that he has visited Moscow since skipping out on $5,000 federal and $5,000 state bail here, “but only as a tourist in a party of 50, that’s all.”

The producer arrived in South Africa in June to negotiate the filming of a remake of the [1935] picture, Sanders of the River [i.e., Death Drums Along the River] […]

From location near Durban, Towers said he picked South Africa for the movie “as a second Hollywood because of rugged country, untamed areas and perfect climate.”

“Recent reports against me date back a few years, and have been revived as a result of the regrettable Profumo affair with which I have no connection,” he added. […]

In any case, it was learned Wednesday night that Towers is fairly safe from extradition. A Justice Department spokesman said “language” in the extradition treaty between the United States and South Africa refers only to procuring – and not to transportation, the federal charge against him. […]

There is still the possibility that Towers could be extradited to face the state charges, but the State also was discouraged, it was reported, by the nonavailability of witnesses. [8]

“In this colony,” as one character puts it in Mozambique, “who needs to be legal? Relax and enjoy the trip.”

Rainer Chlodwig von K.

Rainer is the author Drugs, Jungles, and Jingoism.

Endnotes

[1] Maasz, Ronnie. A Cast of Shadows. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2004, p. 91.

[2] Ibid., p. 94.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., pp. 94-95.

[5] Sullivan, Michael John. Presidential Passions: The Love Affairs of America’s Presidents – from Washington and Jefferson to Kennedy and Johnson. New York, NY: S.P.I. Books, 1992, p. 77.

[6] “Call Girl Scoffs at Sift”. The [Port Chester] Daily Item (June 27, 1963), p. 14.

[7] Meisler, Stanley. “US Staying Mum on Spy Scandals”. Lake Charles American Press (June 27, 1963), p. 31.

[8] Shapiro, Fred. “Missing Friend of Ward Turns Up on South African Set”. The Virginian-Pilot (August 9, 1963), p. 25.