Trivia for
Chariots of Fire (1981) More at IMDbPro »

• The "male military band" featured several women disguised with false mustaches.
  
  
• Though it is not mentioned in the movie, both Eric Liddell won bronze in the 200 meters, and Harold M. Abrahams a silver with the 4x100 meters relay team.
  
  
• Jackson Scholz, who hands the note to Eric Liddell before the start of the 400m, had earlier won the gold medal in the 200m.
  
  
• Surprisingly, neither Jackson Scholz nor Charles Paddock was a member of the US gold medal winning 4x100m relay team. Eric Liddell was not a member of the British 4x100m relay team, either.
  
  
• The real Eric Liddell found out about the 100 meter heat being held on a Sunday several months in advance of the Paris games. The British Olympic team was then able to adjust and fit him into the 400 meter race instead.
  
  
• On the sign outside the Paris church where Eric Liddell delivers his sermon, screenplay author Colin Welland's name is listed above as giving the preceding service.
  
  
• Lord Lindsay's character was actually based on an athlete, Lord David George Brownlow Cecil Burghley, who first competed in the 1924 Paris games without winning any medals, but he did win the 400 meter hurdles in the 1928 Amsterdam games.
  
  
• Derek Pringle, who played the captain of the Cambridge University athletics team, was a professional cricketer with Essex and played for England. He is now a cricket journalist.
  
  
• Producer David Puttnam was looking for a story in the mold of A Man for All Seasons (1966), regarding someone who follows their conscience; he felt sports provided clear situations in this sense, and happened upon the story by accident while thumbing through an Olympic reference book in a rented house in Los Angeles. Screenwriter Colin Welland took out advertisements in London newspapers seeking memories of the 1924 Olympics. Many athletes were still living, and Aubrey Montague's son sent him copies of the letters his father had sent home - which gave Welland something to use as a narrative bridge in the film.
  
  
• In real life, the text from the Bible was handed to Eric Liddell by a coach on the US team, not by Jackson Scholz. Colin Welland flew to Florida to obtain Scholz's permission in person for the artistic license.
  
  
• Colin Welland was researching Twice in a Lifetime (1985) shortly before the Oscars ceremony. When he entered the bar in the Pennsylvania steel town where he was carrying out the research, the regulars would call, "Watch your wallets, the British are coming!" This partly inspired Colin Welland's remarks at the end of his Academy Award acceptance speech.
  
  
• About six years after the film's release, Trinity College reenacted the quad dash with British Olympic athletes Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe taking part. Nigel Havers agreed to act as starter. At lunch after the event, the Dean confessed it had been a great mistake not to cooperate with the making of the film.
  
  
• Ruby Wax, 'Stephen Fry' and Kenneth Branagh are among the crowd artists. Fry acted as shop steward (organiser) for the extras and managed in David Puttnam's words to "screw an extra pound a day out of me".
  
  
• The character Tom Watson in the film was in real life Arthur Porritt, future Governor-General of New Zealand and father of the environmentalist Jonathan Porritt. Indeed, two years after the Olympics, Porritt became Surgeon to the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VIII, aka Duke of Windsor), who meets Watson twice in the film, and subsequently to his brother George VI after Edward abdicated - performing lung surgery on the King following his diagnosis with cancer, his failing health attributed to the strains of unexpected kingship as well as his heavy smoking. The character of Andrew Lindsay was loosely based on Lord Burghley. Both men refused permission for their real names to be used, but confessed to regretting their decision after the film was successful.
  
  
• In real life, Lord David Bughley (Lord Lindsay in the Film) was the first man to do the Great Court Run, not Harold Abrahams. This was changed, because David Puttnam was a socialist and did not want to show a Lord winning, and this is one of the reasons that Lord Burghley did not consent to let his name be used in the film.
  
  
• Nigel Havers replaced first choice Patrick Ryecart as Lord Lindsay.
  
  
• Brad Davis and Dennis Christopher appeared as a favor to producer David Puttnam, waiving their fees, in order to attract finance from backers who wanted "marquee names."
  
  
• The movie required many Edwardian costumes. When Reds (1981), set in the same period, ran over time and over budget, it caused costumes pre-booked by "Chariots" to become unavailable.
  
  
• Pupils of Eric Liddell's old school, Eltham College, were shown a special preview of the film at the ABC cinema at Eltham Well Hall, London.
  
  
• When the athletes are running off the beach (in reality West Sands at St Andrews in Scotland) they run towards a large red building clearly marked as a hotel. This is in fact Hamilton hall of residence, a student accommodation hall belonging to the University. The white picket fence that they jump borders the 1st and 18th holes of the Old course, famed for many a British Golf Open.
  
  
• Besides the lead actors, most of the white-clad runners training on West Sands in St. Andrews during the title sequence are St. Andrews golf caddies.
  
  
• The scene in which Harold Abrahams first sees Sybil Gordon, singing as Yum-Yum in "The Mikado", is based on either a mistake of fact or a deliberate alteration to make the story more romantic. In real life, the name of Abrahams' bride was Sybil Evers. Evers was a member of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, but while Sybil Gordon was its principal soprano, Sybil Evers was a minor soprano, who sang the role of Peep-Bo The Mikado, not the lead role Yum-Yum as it appears in the movie. Moreover, she only appeared with the D'Oyly Carte company for one season, 1930-31, six years after the 1924 Olympics.
  
  
• Having completed his first draft, screenwriter Colin Welland was unable to conceive a title for the film beyond the somewhat uninteresting "Runners". The inspiration came one Sunday evening when Welland turned on the television to the BBC's religious music series "Songs of Praise" (1961) - featuring the stirring hymn "Jerusalem" (written by William Blake and set to music by C.H.H. Parry), its chorus including the words "Bring me my chariot of fire"; the writer leapt up to his feet and shouted to his wife Patricia, "I've got it, Pat! 'Chariots of Fire'!"
  
  
• The scene in which Abrahams runs around the quad, was actually based on 1928 Olympic Gold medalist in the 400 meters, David Burghley who had ran around the great court at Trinity College in the time it took the clock to strike 12. Technically, Burghley was the second person to accomplish that feat, as someone had done it before in the 1890s, but then again it took 5 seconds longer back then for the clock to complete its toll.
  
  
• Eric Liddell's 400 meter victory in the 1924 Olympics was an Olympic record of 47.6 and excited the crowd with an unorthodox run. He ran the first 200 meters in 22.2 seconds, considered by track experts to be tactically foolish, considering it was only 0.3 seconds slower than his 200 personal record, but he actually increased his lead in the second half beating the competition by nearly a second.
  
  
• French actor Michael Lonsdale is often credited with being in this film but there is no sign of him in the finished film
  
  
• The film's Best Picture Oscar is displayed at The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television in Yorkshire
  
  
• Extras in the Olympic crowd scenes were told to wear dark colours so they would not stand out. Extras who managed to wear actual Edwardian clothes were paid 20 pounds while those in normal dress were paid 10.
  
  
• The Church service shown at the very beginning and end of the film is based on the actual funeral service of Harold Abrahams, who (as only hinted at in the movie) converted to Christianity later in his life.
  
  
• The funeral service at the beginning of the film was deleted when the film was shown on the In Flight Entertainment.
  
  
• Extras who appear as runners in the movie were paid three times as much as 'normal' extras. Due to sunny weather, sunburn proved to be rather problematic.
  
  
• Parts of the movie were filmed over several days at Goldenacre in Edinburgh. Each morning, TV aerials had to be taken down for historical realism, then re-erected in the evening after shooting ceased. Inevitably, an overrun led to some friction with residents.
  
  
• The movie was named as one of "The 20 Most Overrated Movies Of All Time" by Premiere.
  
  
• Scenes of Eric Liddel courting a Canadian woman in Paris where cut out of the film. She can be seen in the church audience when Liddel is preaching and sitting next to Sandy McGrath during the final race. She is presumably a surrogate for Eric Liddel's real life wife Florence Mackenzie, who was from Canada. She and Liddel actually met years after the 1924 Olympics.
  
  
• The producers intentionally added profanity to the film to avoid a G rating because they thought people would associate a G rating with a film for children.
  
  
• First cinema film of Nicholas Farrell.
  
  
• The production team sought in vain a number of well known USA and UK performers for the tiny cameo role of Clare. Unknown Robin Pappas was cast in the end.
  
  
• Eric Liddell is not only remembered as a track athlete: he was also capped for the Scottish national rugby team a number of times.
  
  
• Liddell was born in China, and died in China. His parents were missionaries there, and he returned as a missionary himself. During the Japanese occupation of China, he was taken into the Japanese Weihsien internment Camp, where he died.
  
  
• Although it received a standing ovation when shown in competition at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival, this movie was mercilessly savaged by the French critics, because it called the French "the frogs" and "an unprincipled lot." In order to prevent the negative critical response from hurting its international distribution, Roger Ebert lobbied the other American critics in attendance to award it the "American Critics Prize", which they did in a 6-5 vote. This marks the only time in the 60-year history of the festival that this award has been presented.
  
  
• The lesson that Eric Liddell reads in the church in Paris is from Isaiah 40: 26, 29-31, King James version. It's interspersed with shots from the Games but is basically: "He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint."
  
  
• Ian Charleson himself wrote Eric Liddell's inspiring speech to the post-race workingmen's crowd. Charleson, who had been studying the Bible in preparation for the role, told director Hugh Hudson that he didn't feel the scripted sanctimonious and portentous speech was either authentic or inspiring. Charleson was uncomfortable with performing the words as scripted. It was decided that Charleson himself should write words that he was comfortable speaking. And thus came the most inspiring speech of the movie.
  
  

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