Swedish actress’s ordeal with a body double in The Wicker Man is revealed 50 years later in a forthcoming book on the classic horror film
When Britt Ekland agreed to star in what was to become a revered classic horror film, it was with the strict understanding that there would be no nude scenes. So, the Swedish starlet felt shocked and betrayed when a body double was brought in to play her character dancing naked in The Wicker Man.
Now, 50 years since the film’s release, the subterfuge producers used to deceive Ms. Ekland has been revealed. Directed by Robin Hardy from a script by Anthony Shaffer, based on David Pinner’s 1967 novel Ritual, The Wicker Man, also starring Christopher Lee, is the story of a puritan police sergeant who arrives on a remote Scottish island in search of a missing girl, only to encounter sinister pagan locals who deny that she ever existed.
Ms. Ekland was cast as Willow MacGregor, an innkeeper’s sexually-liberated daughter, who seduces the God-fearing policeman, played by Edward Woodward. In a new book about the making of the film, she has relived the horror of discovering that, without her consent, the film-makers brought in a stripper as her body double for the nude scene – despite an agreement that she would only be shown from the waist up. She said, “During the shoot, I had two days off, and that’s when they shot some of my scenes with a Glaswegian stripper.”
Mr. Walsh discovered that she had been the victim of “subterfuge” in the way that that scene was filmed. First assistant director Jake Wright recalls: “We filmed the dance sequence with Britt Ekland stripped to the waist singing and dancing. When it was finished, we said, ‘thank you very much, that’s enough for tonight.’