Soft Beds, Hard Battles (1974)

Interesting facts

Soft Beds, Hard Battles is a 1974 British comedy film directed by Roy Boulting, starring Peter Sellers, Curd Jürgens, Lila Kedrova and Jenny Hanley. Sellers reunited with the Boulting brothers for this farce, in which the women of a brothel help the war effort to rid the world of the Nazi peril – in the bedroom.

Production

John and Roy Boulting had been pursuing separate careers for several years before reuniting to make this film. John left his position as managing director of British Lion which he held for six years to produce "because I am anxious to make films again."

The project began as a script called The Saga of the Six Black Virgins by Maurice Foster. The brothers disliked it but were interested in the idea of viewing the war through the point of view of a brothel, albeit with new characters and a new story. Roy Boulting wrote the script with Leo Marks in 1971 and 1972. They decided to offer the film to Peter Sellers, who accepted in July 1972.

John Boulting called the film "a flippant look at war and the absurdities of war... All naked men are alike really and the film stresses the idea that wars are not won or lost by top level Whitehall, Pentagon, or Wilhemstrasse strategy but by fortuitous intangibles and by the foibles of human beings."

The Boultings revived their old company, Charter Film Productions, and obtained investment from Lord Goodman and Max Rayne. Part of the budget came from the Rank Organisation (by the end of the 1974 financial year Rank financed Carry on Dick, Carry on Girls, The Belstone Fox and Don't Just Lie There, Say Something, and partly financed Soft Beds and Hard Battles and Caravan to Vaccares.)

In August 1972 the Boultings were told Sellers had changed his mind. Filming was postponed, although the Boultings had spent £35,000 of their own money. Sellers eventually changed his mind again.

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