Pidgeon. Granger was to play Irishman Terence Mulvaney, with the other lead characters called Ortheris and Learoyd. Tay Garnett signed to direct. Eventually Kelly dropped out and David Niven and Cyril Cusack signed on to star. Greta Gynt was given her first role in American films as the female lead. The bulk of the story was taken from Kipling's "The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney". Pandro S. Berman told the New York Times he was aware the story was politically tricky: We are making a rough and tumble brawling comedy with three British soldiers out of a Kipling work as major characters and that presents major problems. The people of India hated Kipling. As to the British, how they will react when we show three roistering, drunken Tommies on the screen is a question. When I produced Gunga Din at RKO in 1938 it was banned in India and efforts were made to stop it being shown in the British Isles. But if we were to film Soldiers Three to please either Britain or India we would have to make it much too dull to for our much bigger audience here at home. Nonetheless Berman insisted on the creation of a new character, Gobind Lal, a peaceful Indian, who was not in the Kipling original, although care was taken that Lal did not resemble Mahatma Gandhi too closely. The final scene was altered so that Indian rebels laid down their arms to indicate their support of passive resistance. Berman also arranged for Mulvaney's irreverence to the Hindu god Krishna to be removed so as not to offend Indians. Further changes were made when it was realised that Granger could not do an Irish accent – the character of Mulvaney was changed to the Cockney "Ackroyd" (Granger could do Cockney). Once this change was made, Berman decided that the other two lead characters should also have their names changed, to Malloy and Sykes, to emphasise that the work was more of an MGM original than derived from Kipling. Filming started October 1950. During the filming of a barroom brawl scene, a balcony collapsed and two stunt men were hospitalised. Tay Garnett later wrote: [The cast and story] should have made a good picture, but the miscasting of one principal, which I failed to recognize until it was too late, threw the show completely out of balance. Trying to restore equilibrium with jokes