he wanted to direct the novel before Zanuck approached him: After my experience with Selznick [on A Farewell to Arms] – all those memorandum! – I'd sworn never to work with a producer again, but I did want very much to make this particular film. So we met several times and talked it through and finally agreed to try it. Huston agreed to direct for a fee he described as "slightly higher" than $300,000. Regarding the irony of a big-game hunter like Huston making a film about a militant elephant conservationist, Huston said: "Contrary to prevailing opinion, I never found an elephant big enough to justify the sin of killing one." Zanuck visited the Belgian Congo in late 1957 to scout locations. Casting William Holden was mentioned as a possibility for the lead part of Morel, as was James Mason. Holden wanted to take the role but he was under contract to Paramount, which would not permit him to make the film unless he signed another contract, but he refused. The lead role was taken by Trevor Howard. Errol Flynn signed to play a key support role but was given top billing. Flynn left the cast of the play The Master of Thornfield to appear in the film. Flynn and John Huston had famously brawled at a Hollywood party more than a decade earlier. Juliette Gréco, who had appeared in Zanuck's version of The Sun Also Rises and became his lover, was signed as the female lead. Eddie Albert and Paul Lukas rounded out the main cast. Orson Welles signed on for a cameo role. Shooting Shooting took place mainly on location in French Equatorial Africa over five months in the Belgian Congo and Chad in the Northern Cameroons, where the elephants were located. The cast and crew suffered from heat, malaria and other tropical diseases. Temperatures would routinely reach in the day and degrees at night, and people would shower four or five times per night. Some days required a four-hour drive to the location and back, and all water was transported to the set by aircraft. Juliette Gréco contracted a serious illness and the company reported 900 sick calls from a cast and crew of 120. Flynn mentioned the challenges of the location with affection in his autobiography My Wicked, Wicked Ways (1959). Zanuck said "I would never make a picture there again" but he was proud that