Elephant Walk

Elephant Walk is a 1954 Paramount Pictures film, directed by William Dieterle, and starring Elizabeth Taylor, Dana Andrews, Peter Finch and Abraham Sofaer.

It is based upon the novel Elephant Walk by "Robert Standish", the pseudonym of the English novelist Digby George Gerahty (1898–1981).

It was originally intended to star the husband and wife team of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh (with Olivier in the Finch role). However Olivier was already committed to the project The Beggar's Opera (1953). Leigh was enthusiastic about the role and continued in her husband's absence, but she was forced to withdraw from production shortly after filming began in Colombo, Ceylon, as a result of bipolar disorder. According to Leonard Maltin's annual Movie Guide book, Leigh can be seen in some long shots that were not re-filmed after Elizabeth Taylor replaced her.

Plot

Colonial tea planter John Wiley, visiting England at the end of World War II, wins and weds lovely English rose Ruth and takes her home to Elephant Walk, Ceylon, where the local elephants have a grudge against the plantation because it blocks their migrating path. Ruth's delight with the tropical wealth and luxury of her new home is tempered by isolation as the only white woman in the district; by her husband's occasional imperious arrogance; by a mutual physical attraction with plantation manager Dick Carver; and by the hovering, ominous menace of the hostile elephants. The elephants end up destroying the plantation in a stampede along with a fire.

Elephant Walk (Texas A&M)

Elephant Walk is a tradition at Texas A&M University in which the senior class walks around campus to remember the good times they had at Texas A&M. This tradition generally takes place the week before the last regular-season football game, which before A&M's 2012 move to the Southeastern Conference was the Texas (University of Texas at Austin) game. It signifies the last time that the seniors will stand as a part of the 12th Man student corpus.

History

In 1922, two freshman members of the Fightin' Texas Aggie Band, Oluf G. "Piccolo Red" Carson (Fort Worth, TX) and J. William "Sarge" Dorsey (Harlingen, TX), began playing a funeral march after losing a football game. The two bandsmen, a piccolo player and a bass horn player respectively, began walking away slowly, like an elephant wandering away to die. Other members of the band fell in behind. They continued the march after each football game for the remainder of the season, regardless of the outcome. Following that first walk, the Aggies began a winning streak, including a victory over their archrival, the University of Texas at Austin. At the conclusion of the football season, their marches were discontinued.