This article is taken from the British Photoplay Film & TV Scene magazine, February 1980. The two lead stories were Disney's 'The Black Hole' and Clint Eastwood's 'Escape from Alcatraz'. Other featured stories included 'My Day with Flash Gordon' and an article on Roger Vadim. Both Murder by Decree - 'We'll never tire of this crime-busting duo' (Holmes and Watson) - and Bear Island 'For undemanding action fans only' were given half-page reviews
SUTHERLAND IN SHIVERLAND for 'BEAR ISLAND'
Donald Sutherland has a reputation for being accident prone. So when he made the physically demanding Bear Island in the frozen wastes of Alaska, he kept his cool and managed to stay warm at the same time.
It's all a matter of co-ordinating his lanky 6'4" frame.
Because he lacked co-ordination, he was, as a kid, turned down by every athletic team he tried out for.. "I even joined the sea cadets so I could be their bass drum player," he says. "I thought they would be sure to let me do it because I was the tallest. But they gave it to some little guy. I even failed a bass drum audition.
"I never actually broke bones," he says, "but I'd regularly cut my forehead walking into doors; that kind of thing.
"During the period I spent with Jane Fonda, whenever I didn't turn up for a performance and the phone rang, Jane would shout, 'What's happened to him... what's he done now'?"
Now he's got it together, and in Bear Island, the film version of Alastair MacLean's mystery adventure, Sutherland plays a marine biologist caught up in a web of intrigue on an Arctic island. He performs such feats of derring-do as escaping on skis from an avalanche, driving snow scooters at top speed, and doing some underwater diving.
When the going got too rough, like being dropped into an ocean so cold it kills in minutes, his stunt double Vic Armstrong took over. But some of the dangerous stuff was done by Donald himself, no wonder he managed to keep warm... well, warm enough in those sub-zero temperatures.
Remembering his days filming in Glacier Bay, Alaska, he says, "The silence and the snow, the terrible darkness; it seemed we were at the end of the world. You couldn't hear cars on the road because everything seemed to be muffled."
It was an experience that brought back memories of his home in snowy New Brunswick in Canada.
"There was even a broken ski-lift on location," he grins, "and we always had a broken ski-lift in New Brunswick!"
While he was braving the Alaskan weather with co-stars Vanessa Redgrave, Lloyds Bridges, Richard Widmark, Barbara Perkins and Christopher Lee, warming news thawed Donald's icy ears. Two of his films had proved commercially successful, The First Great Train Robbery and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
These films gave his career a much needed boost (since films like Casanova and 1900 failed to make much of an box-office impact)> His first big success was, of course, as the star of M.A.S.H.
That first taste of success was something he once dreamed of, but never expected.
"After a small role in The Dirty Dozen I went to Hollywood and stuck around waiting to make M.A.S.H. while a lot of directors and a whole bunch of actors turned it down. Everybody told me not to do it, that it would ruin me.
"Then Robert Altman, who was really the last choice of director, finally got it together, and we made it in five weeks in Malibu Canyon.
"Then I went straight off to Kelly's Heroes in Yugoslavia and got spinal meningitis.
"That started out as a very bad year... but ended up terrific. I didn't die in Yugoslavia after all and Elliott Gould invited me to New York. It was a wonderful experience. I couldn't believe it. People would come up to me in the street and kiss me, and I'd say 'But I don't know you' and they'd say 'No, but we've seen you in M.A.S.H.' Suddenly I was well known."
Since then Donald hasn't had to worry about trying to impress directors at interviews, although at such meetings he always tried to be just himself. There was one terrible experience when, in his early days, he went to meet Stanley Kubrick.
It was a freezing day in London when Donald went to see Kubrick at a hotel. He didn't have a coat, but under his suit he wore long underwear.
Arriving at the hotel, he found it too warm inside, so he went to the washroom, removed his underwear and stuffed them into his suitcase.
In Kubrick's room, the director silently studied the actor, and finally asked, "What have you got in the briefcase?"
"My long underwear" replied Donald honestly.
"I don't think that's funny," said the straight-faced Kubrick. So Donald opened the briefcase.
"But it was too late," he recalls. "He made it clear the interview was over. I got up and said It's been a pleasure meeting you,' and I said it with an Italian accent.
"To this day Kubrick must think I'm some sort of a mad-man."
The long underwear might have seemed an ideal part of his wardrobe to take with him to Bear Island, but it wasn't necessary.
"They gave me thermal underwear and proper protection," he explains.