I was one of the Lord of the Flies child actors in 1963

Image: Lord of the Flies (1963); Photograph IMDb

Reunion of men who as child actors took part in Lord of the Flies (1963) as part of the Chiswick In Film Festival

Simon Surtees remembers the summer of 1961 as a great adventure. He and his identical twin brother David had been picked to play Eric and Sam in Peter Brook’s film version of Lord of the Flies, adapted from the book by William Golding, and were to spend the whole of their summer holidays acting it out in Puerto Rico.

Simon, who some will know as a leading member of the congregation at St Paul’s Church, Grove Park, will be talking about the experience with other men who were child actors in the film at the third Chiswick In Film Festival in November.

“We were living in New York in late 1960,” Simon told The Chiswick Calendar. “Peter Brook had been trying to get the money together to make the film. Sam Spiegel wanted to do it, but he wanted to do it with girls and Peter Brook said ‘no’.

“Lewis M. Allen and Dana Hodgson said they would do it. They had a small production company, and they had just had a hit with The Connection.”

Filming in Puerto Rico

Peter Brook was often referred to in the 1960s and ’70s as “our greatest living theatre director”, having worked at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, the Royal Opera House, and from 1962 for the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), and won multiple Emmy Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, the Japanese Praemium Imperiale, the Prix Italia and the Europe Theatre Prize. Lord of the Flies was his third film.

He also has a strong Chiswick connection, as he was born in Bedford Park in 1925. The family home was at 27 Fairfax Road.

The production company had found the perfect place for filming, in Vieques Island, 13 km east of the mainland of Puerto Rico, but they could not afford to fly a cast of English boys out there from England.

Someone hit on the bright idea of phoning all the English families in New York. When their mother took the call, she told them she did not want anything to do with the project; she did not want the notoriety she know would come with it, but the film company, attracted by the fact Simon and David were identical twins, gently persisted.

Eventually she was persuaded to let them go for a screen test, even though they were just nine, younger than the 10 – 14 age range they were looking for. The director liked the fact that they looked as similar on screen as they did in person.

“Mother was given the book to read, but I don’t think she read it, which was probably for the best”

Their mother, who had been a matron in a boys school before she married, said they could go on condition that she went with them.

“What was she thinking?” I asked Simon. The book, often chosen for study in the English curriculum, tells the story of a group of boys who survive a plane crash on an island in the South Pacific, and shows the dark side of human nature as the group, without adult supervision, quickly descends into savagery.

It could, I suggested, have been quite psychologically damaging.

“It could,” agreed Simon, “but somehow it wasn’t. It could have been quite frightening, but I don’t think we felt it at all.”

A major clue might have been their final audition, in which they had to find the ‘pig’ (Peter Brook) in the rooftop garden of a New York building and attack him.

“Mother was given the book to read, but I don’t think she read it, which was probably for the best.”

Simon remembers a scene in which Peter Brook wanted him and his brother to cry on camera, so he took them off to a part of the island where there were cacti and stuck cactus spines in them. That worked.

“David and I got ‘boys of the week’ for doing that. I don’t think my mother ever knew.”

Improvising the frenzied attack on ‘the beast’

Peter Brook chose boys who to some extent demonstrated the characteristics of the role they were playing. Tom Chapin, who played Jack, the villain of the piece, immediately went off by himself and found himself a girlfriend, while James Aubrey, who played the lead character, was quite emotional, Simon remembers.

In the story the boys convince themselves there is a ‘beast’. In the darkness they mount a frenzied attack on this beast, who turns out to be one of the group. The filming of that scene left an impression on Simon Surtees.

“We filmed it on a beach on the mainland of Puerto Rico, at Aguadilla. It was getting dark and we all had to improvise. Ralph and Piggy, Sam and Eric turn up, the only ones outside Jack’s group, and we all had to rush at Simon with spears. One of the crew ran off, he was so scared.”

Sharing their living accommodation with spiders and hermit crabs

They slept as a group in a disused pineapple cannery, repurposed as a dormitory, “infested with spiders and hermit crabs.”

They were kept pretty busy, but on days when they were not needed there were social activities. “It was great fun,” said Simon.

The film opened to tremendous acclaim, but was X rated, so he only got to see it in a private screening.

“Some of it scared me. There were things I wasn’t expecting.

“It lost its reputation a bit in the 1970s, perhaps because it was in black and white, but it was listed as one of the BFI’s films of the week last year and Mark Kermode gave it a tremendous review.”

60th anniversary of the film’s UK release

Released in the United States in 1963, the screening at the Chiswick In Film Festival will mark the 60th anniversary of its release in this country.

Though Simon will be at Chiswick Cinema in person for the reunion, others will be joining in a Zoom call – Tom Gaman, who played Simon, and Kent Fletcher, who played Percival, from the United States, and Nicholas Hammond, who played quite a small part as one of the choir boys, but went on to have a very successful career as an adult actor, will be joining from Australia.

The panel discussion and screening will be on the evening of Sunday 17 November.

Book tickets:  Lord of the Flies + Q&A

Photographs from Simon’s album

Our sponsors

The Chiswick In Film Festival is a collaboration between The Chiswick Calendar and Chiswick Cinema, with film industry professionals Andrea Carnevali and Rob Sprackling. We would not be able to bring you this cinematic feast in this way without the support of our sponsor.

Chiswick in Film Festival 2024 is kindly sponsored by The London Bath Co. whose shop is on Chiswick High Road and who offer superior, fully fitted bathrooms and kitchens from design to installation.

Read more stories on The Chiswick Calendar