Written for Facebook (or some place like that) by STARLOG editor Dave McDonnell:

On the High Road to China With Kelly’s Heroes

Sad to discover the passing of another of the famous folks with whom I’ve had an odd encounter: actor-turned-director Brian G. Hutton, who helmed two of my very favorite WWII adventure films (both starring Clint Eastwood), WHERE EAGLES DARE and KELLY’S HEROES.

In December 1982, STARLOG Publisher Norm Jacobs gave me the gig to edit two licensed magazines showcasing Golden Harvest’s upcoming adventure flick HIGH ROAD TO CHINA (directed by Hutton, starring Tom Selleck). I had only been on STARLOG’s staff for two months, but I had edited an article about the picture for my previous employer, Jim Steranko’s MEDIASCENE PREVUE. That single credit represented my "special expertise." I also suspect nobody else on the company’s editorial staff much wanted to do it.

So, I flew out on a Friday morning to LA, sifted through 14,000 HIGH ROAD photos at Golden Harvest’s offices (and later in my motel room), flew back to NYC on the Saturday night Red-Eye and spent every spare moment throughout the next few weeks crafting two publications. There would be the standard Movie Magazine and a Poster Magazine (a 16-page sheet of paper with a cover and articles printed on one side, giant Selleck fold-out poster on the other).

Golden Harvest publicist Al Ebner (with whom Starlog later worked on BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA) was a great assist. He arranged my phone interviews with Hutton, Bess Armstrong and others. Ebner also persuaded Armstrong and Jack Weston to autograph pix for reader giveaways.

I wrote everything in both magazines myself (devoting the freelance budget to retiring my student loan)—except for a couple stories by Bethany College pal John Sayers. My colleague Bob Greenberger and STARLOG Editor Howard Zimmerman also helped out, doing some captions when I tired of that endless task and could write no more.

These were the first-ever licensed magazines I edited (about 100 more, movie & TV, would follow). Amazingly, Publisher Jacobs (an ex-Art Director) decided to keep costs down by designing both magazines entirely himself. Every day while we were in production, I had to prepare a story (text, photos, instructions). Norm would design it that night at home (rubber cement pasteups!), bringing it to me the next morning with spaces indicated for those annoying captions (written, in this case, after the layout). It was also extremely daunting for rookie me to work—for the first time—so directly with the company co-owner (and Big Cheese).

Did you see the movie? Some great aerial action and enjoyable stuff with Selleck, Armstrong, Weston and larger-than-life character actors Brian Blessed, Robert Morley and Wilford Brimley. But HIGH ROAD TO CHINA isn’t as spectacular and twisty as Hutton’s WHERE EAGLES DARE (1968) or as off-kilter fun as his KELLY’S HEROES (1970). It’s just, well, genial. A box-office disappointment (released by Warner Bros.). Naturally, our HIGH ROAD magazines didn’t sell well (though my Grandma liked them; she had the Selleck poster plastered on her nursing home wall until her 1988 death at 96).

Well, that’s a lotta backstory (as if I was being paid by the word). Let me tell you about my phoner with Brian Hutton. It was a hoot. He was funny, informative, poignant.

And candid. HIGH ROAD TO CHINA only got made, Hutton told me, because of the stellar success of 1981’s RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Selleck, famously, had almost been Indiana Jones, and this project was seen as the actor’s chance to recapture that glory evaded.

Hutton was also indiscreet. He noted that a couple of crew members had been killed in a tragic helicopter accident during downtime away from the shoot in Yugoslavia. A naive newbie, I actually printed that info—and Golden Harvest and my contact Al Ebner (neither apparently used to licensed magazine censorship perogatives) let me. I’m still flabbergasted that Hutton would discuss it and Golden Harvest didn’t delete the mention.

The director knew that HIGH ROAD was escapist nonsense, but he still gave it his all. He discussed the movie with great passion. But he was even more excited about three other things.

One was real estate. Hutton told me how he had bought various apartment buildings in the Los Angeles area and ran them on the side. He even enjoyed working occasionally as his own Mr. Fix-It. A high-powered filmmaker who had directed Eastwood, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and Frank Sinatra and also, apparently, repaired plumbing? It was an odd touch (and the life to which he retired, HIGH ROAD TO CHINA was his last picture).

Of course, the other two things were WHERE EAGLES DARE and KELLY’S HEROES. After we were done kvetching about HIGH ROAD, I (fanboy forever) admitted my great love for both previous movies. Decades later, Hutton discussed them in two terrific (single-film-focused) publications from CINEMA RETRO, but, with me, our real interview over, he spent the overtime talking about KELLY’S HEROES.

Like HIGH ROAD, it, too, had filmed in Yugoslavia. And just kept on filming and filming. Seems there had been "regime change" at the studio. Hutton laughingly suggested that MGM didn’t even realize they were still making the movie. Hutton, crew and cast (including Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, Gavin MacLeod, Carroll O’Connor and Harry Dean Stanton) had a fine old time, drinking and carousing on their unexpected Yugoslavian vacation (supposedly lengthened by Eastwood’s appendicitis attack, though I can’t find confirmation of that factoid).

Acccording to Hutton, they were all having such good times making the movie, co-star Donald Sutherland asked for a reprieve. The script had his character (tank commander "Oddball") getting killed off. But Sutherland, Hutton said, was enjoying himself so immensely that he wanted Oddball to survive and be part of the film’s finale—so that Sutherland, too, could party on off-screen. So, they changed the script! Oddball lives!

That’s how I picture Brian G. Hutton, director and apartment handyman: fun, accommodating and entertaining, making a non-stop movie and throwing a non-stop party, and all at the same time.