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Director [[Joe Dante]] recruited many of the surviving actors of ''The Dirty Dozen'' to voice the ''[[Small Soldiers]]'' in his film of the same name. Charles Bronson turned him down.<ref>http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Island/3102/small.htm</ref>
Director [[Joe Dante]] recruited many of the surviving actors of ''The Dirty Dozen'' to voice the ''[[Small Soldiers]]'' in his film of the same name. Charles Bronson turned him down.<ref>http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Island/3102/small.htm</ref>


==Miscellany==
==Parody==
{{importance-sect}}
The television channel [[Turner Classic Movies]] paid homage to the movie in a television commercial "Dirty Dozen on Ice" in which scenes of the movie are shown being played out via an [[Ice show]] in front of an audience (who are familiar with the story as a 'classic'). Appreciation for the movie is conveyed through the building of the suspense until the audience's desire for Jefferson to achieve his mission is palpable, perhaps hoping he makes it out alive this time. Accolades in the form of flowers are then thrown to the fallen Jefferson.
The television channel [[Turner Classic Movies]] paid homage to the movie in a television commercial "Dirty Dozen on Ice" in which scenes of the movie are shown being played out via an [[Ice show]] in front of an audience (who are familiar with the story as a 'classic'). Appreciation for the movie is conveyed through the building of the suspense until the audience's desire for Jefferson to achieve his mission is palpable, perhaps hoping he makes it out alive this time. Accolades in the form of flowers are then thrown to the fallen Jefferson.


Revision as of 15:50, 29 July 2009

For the hip hop group, see D12. For John Walsh's Dirty Dozen Fugitives, see America's Most Wanted.
The Dirty Dozen
original poster by Frank McCarthy (artist)
Directed byRobert Aldrich
Written byNovel:
E.M. Nathanson
Screenplay:
Nunnally Johnson
Lukas Heller
Produced byKenneth Hyman
StarringLee Marvin
Ernest Borgnine
Charles Bronson
Jim Brown
John Cassavetes
Richard Jaeckel
George Kennedy
Trini Lopez
Ralph Meeker
Robert Ryan
Telly Savalas
Robert Webber
Clint Walker
Donald Sutherland
CinematographyEdward Scaife
Edited byMichael Luciano
Music byFrank De Vol
Distributed byMGM
Release date
June 15, Template:Fy
Running time
150 minutes
CountryTemplate:FilmUS
LanguageTransclusion error: {{En}} is only for use in File namespace. Use {{lang-en}} or {{in lang|en}} instead.
Box office$45,300,000 (US)
$20,403,826 (US rentals)
File:Dirty12 set.jpg
1967 lobbycard set

The Dirty Dozen is a Template:Fy World War II war film directed by Robert Aldrich, based on the novel by E. M. Nathanson and starring Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Telly Savalas, Charles Bronson and Jim Brown. Though ostensibly about World War II, the story deals with contemporary 1967 themes of individualism vs. collectivism, cultural relativism, internal and external racism, and their meanings within patriotism and duty in war[citation needed].

Plot

In England, in the spring of 1944, Allied forces are preparing for the D-Day invasion. Among them are Major John Reisman (Lee Marvin), an OSS officer; his commander, Regular Army Major General Worden (Ernest Borgnine), and his former commander Colonel Everett Dasher Breed (Robert Ryan). Early in the film the personalities of the three men are shown to clash and the characters of the individualistic Reisman and the domineering Breed are established.

Major Reisman is assigned an unusual and top-secret pre-invasion mission: take twelve American soldiers convicted of capital offenses, either serving sentences of hard labor or awaiting execution, and whip them into a unit capable of carrying out the task. The plan, as described, is to infiltrate a château near Rennes, in Brittany, used as a retreat for senior Wehrmacht officers, on the eve of the invasion. Without having complete intelligence as to the identity of the guests, it was felt that the elimination of officers in the German high command or senior staff could cripple or confuse the German military's ability to respond at the time of crisis. It is quickly established that both Reisman and the generals with whom he frequently clashes consider the mission to be a suicidal long shot.

The film unfolds in three major acts; the first act identifies and "recruits" the prisoners, depicts the unit in training and highlights the interpersonal conflict between the men, some of whom see the mission as a chance for redemption and others as a chance for escape.

The second act places the mission, and the characters, in jeopardy when a breach of military regulations on Reisman's part forces General Worden, at Breed's urging, to have the men - now dubbed the Dirty Dozen by Sergeant Bowren (Richard Jaeckel) because of their refusal to shave or bathe as a protest against their living conditions - prove their worth as soldiers.

The final act, which was a mere footnote in the novel, is a set piece action sequence depicting in detail the attack on the chateau.

Characters

Reisman interviews the dozen convicts chosen for the mission: they include a gangster (John Cassavetes), a psychopath (Telly Savalas), a cynical ex-officer (Charles Bronson) and a black activist (Jim Brown). They are taken to an isolated part of the country under the guard of a squad of military police led by Sergeant Bowren, who proves an able second-in-command to Reisman.

The individualists who are the dozen convicts are shown to mature, grow and coalesce in to a team, at one point resolving to not shave or bathe until given hot water, hence, becoming The Dirty Dozen. Later, they prove their regained military value in a field training exercise that suits Major Reisman's professional and personal goals in his feud with Colonel Breed.

The team demonstrates its unity with the operational count-off: "One: down to the road block, we've just begun; Two: the guards are through; Three: the Major's men are on a spree; Four: Major and Wladislaw go through the door; Five: Pinkley stays out in the drive; Six: the Major gives the rope a fix; Seven: Wladislaw throws the hook to heaven; Eight: Jiménez has got a date; Nine: the other guys go up the line; Ten: Sawyer and Gilpin are in the pen; Eleven: Posey guards points five and seven; Twelve: Wladislaw and the Major go down to delve; Thirteen: Franko goes up without being seen; Fourteen: Zero-hour, Jiménez cuts the cable, Franko cuts the phone; Fifteen: Franko goes in where the others have been; Sixteen: we all come out like it's Halloween."

Sergeant Bowren is also part of the mission. Landing in France, they discover themselves short one man; Jiménez broke his neck in the parachute jump. They approach the château gate in German uniform, shooting (with silenced pistols) and knifing the guards, commando-style. Wladislaw, who speaks rudimentary German, and Reisman enter the château as guests, spill ink on the guest register so they do not have to sign in German, and go to their room, beginning to sneak in several of their men.

The plan goes awry when a German woman walks into the room where Maggot is hiding. He pokes his bayonet to her throat and pushes her out into the hallway. Yielding to his sadism, he urges her to scream, then stabs her to death just when she thinks he will not kill her because she's done as he wished. Downstairs, the Wehrmacht officers mistake her death scream for passion; only Maggot's subsequent gunfire alerts them of the attack. Gilpin was to blow up the rooftop radio-telephone antenna but was pinned when his leg breached rotting roof slats upon approach. He dies when he explodes the antenna tower in spite of his inability to free himself. Panic ensues and the Germans flee to an underground bomb shelter; Wladislaw and Reisman lock them in.

Resorting to plan-B, they seed the shelter's air vents with hand grenades, then pour gasoline/petrol down the vent shafts; Jefferson is assigned to run to each vent, drop a live grenade, and escape. The German officers and their women will be incinerated.

Meanwhile, most of the Dirty Dozen are killed by snipers and German soldiers counter-attacking from the main road. Fighting their way out, Maj. Reisman, Wladislaw, Sgt. Bowren and Franko escape in a German heavy half-tracked transport (hot wired by the criminally-resourceful Franko); Reisman, Bowren and one of the Dirty Dozen, Wladislaw, survive the suicide mission after Franko, having boasted that they've made it, gets shot in the back by a surviving German soldier.

The film concludes in a hospital room where Sgt Bowren on crutches is shown visiting Reisman and Wladislaw who are bedridden with broken bones and other serious wounds received in the battle. They are visited by the general officers, their former tormentors who sent them on this suicide mission who now have nothing but smiles and praise for the survivors. Wladislaw is heard to mutter "Oh boy... killing generals could get to be a habit with me".

Cast

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Production

Although Robert Aldrich had tried to buy the rights to E.M. Nathanson's novel The Dirty Dozen while it was just an outline, MGM succeeded in May 1963. The novel was a best-seller upon publication in 1965.

The English prison camp location scenes were filmed at Ashridge in Hertfordshire. The château was built especially for the production, by art director William Hutchinson, it was 240 ft. wide and 50 ft. high, surrounded with 5,400 sq. yds. of heather, 400 ferns, 450 shrubs, 30 spruce trees and 6 weeping willows. Construction of the faux château proved problematic. The script required its explosion, but it was so solid that 70 tons of explosives would have been required for the effect. Instead, a cork and plastic section was destroyed.

The movie is remembered for being the one during which Cleveland Browns running back Jim Brown announced his retirement from football at age 29. Browns' owner Art Modell demanded Brown choose between football and acting. With Brown's considerable accomplishments in the sport (he was already the NFL's all-time leading rusher, was predominantly ahead statistically of the second-leading rusher, and his team had won the 1964 NFL Championship), he chose acting. Despite his early retirement from football, Brown remains the league's eighth all-time leading rusher, the Cleveland Browns all-time leading rusher, and the only player in league history to have a career average 100 yards per game. In some form of tribute, Art Modell himself said in Spike Lee's Jim Brown: All American documentary, that he made a huge mistake in forcing Jim Brown to choose between football and Hollywood and if he had it to do over again, he would never have made such a demand. Modell fined Jim Brown the equivalent of over $100 per day, a fine which Brown said that 'today wouldn't even buy the doughnuts for a team'.

Casting

The cast included many World War II US veterans, including Robert Webber (Marines), Telly Savalas and Charles Bronson (Army), Ernest Borgnine (Navy) and Clint Walker (Merchant Marine). Marvin served as a Private First Class in the US Marines in the Pacific War and provided technical assistance with uniforms and weapons to create realistic portrayals of combat, yet bitterly complained about the falsity of some scenes. He thought Reisman's wresting the bayonet from the enraged Posey to be particularly phony. Aldrich replied that the plot was preposterous, and that by the time the audience had left the cinema, they would have been so overwhelmed by action, explosions, and killing, that they would have forgotten the lapses.

The original choice for Major Reisman, John Wayne turned the role down because the original script featured the character having an adulterous relationship with an Englishwoman whose husband was fighting on the Continent that Wayne strongly objected to.[1]Jack Palance refused the "Archer Maggot" role when they wouldn't rewrite the script to make his character lose his racism; Telly Savalas took the role instead.[2]

Trini López's character, Jiménez, died early after his agent unwisely demanded more money. The character was to have been heroic, igniting the dynamite that would have destroyed the château. Instead of giving in to a new salary demand, director Aldrich killed the character off.

Six of the Dozen were experienced American stars whilst the "Back Six" were actors resident in the UK, Englishman Colin Maitland, Canadians Donald Sutherland and Tom Busby, and Americans Stuart Cooper, Al Mancini, and Ben Carruthers. According to commentary on The Dirty Dozen: 2-Disc Special Edition when Trini López left the film early, the death scene of Lopez's character where he blew himself up with the radio tower was given to Busby [3] (in the actual film, however, it is Ben Carruthers character Glenn Gilpin who is tasked with blowing up the radio tower while Busby's character Milo Vladek is shot in front of the château).[4] The same commentary also states that the impersonation of the General scene was to have been done by Clint Walker who thought the scene demeaning to his character who was a Native American. Aldrich picked out Sutherland for the bit.[5]

Reception and criticism

For the 1960s, The Dirty Dozen was an unconventional, extremely violent war film. The violence shocked Roger Ebert, who, in his first year as a film reviewer for the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote:

I'm glad the Chicago Police Censor Board forgot about that part of the local censorship law where it says films shall not depict the burning of the human body. If you have to censor, stick to censoring sex, I say...but leave in the mutilation, leave in the sadism and by all means leave in the human beings burning to death. It's not obscene as long as they burn to death with their clothes on.[6]

Box office performance

This film was the #1 moneymaker of 1967, earning a net profit of $18,200,000.[7] The film was a box office hit particularly among young male film goers. It has remained popular on such revival vehicles as TBS and TCM. Lee Marvin's character as the cynical and insubordinate maverick who repeatedly defies and insults the US Army brass generated a strong resonance with audiences then and now. To the discomfort of the Pentagon, the film did very well when played on or near US military installations around the world as well as home.

Truth or fiction?

In the prologue to the novel, Nathanson states that, while he heard a legend that such a unit may have existed, he was unable to find any corroboration in the archives of the US Army in Europe.

Capital crime executions in the U.S. Army were not uncommon; the most famous is that of deserter Eddie Slovik. HMP Shepton Mallet prison was operated by the American military; per the Visiting Forces Act of 1942, eighteen men were put to death; sixteen hanged and two shot.

Despite rumors, The Dirty Dozen is not based on the Filthy Thirteen, an airborne demolition unit documented in the eponymous book.[8] Unlike the Dirty Dozen, the Filthy Thirteen were not convicts.

Sequels and adaptations

Several made-for-TV movies were produced in the mid- to late-1980s which capitalized on the popularity of the first movie. Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine reprised their roles for The Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission in Template:Ytv, leading a group of military convicts in a mission to kill a German general who was plotting to assassinate Adolf Hitler. In The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission (Template:Ytv) Telly Savalas, who had played the role of the psychotic Maggott in the original movie, assumed the different role of Major Wright, an officer who leads a group of military convicts to extract a group of German scientists who are being forced to make a deadly nerve gas. Ernest Borgnine again reprised his role of General Worden. The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission (Template:Fy) depicts Telly Savalas's Wright character and a group of renegade soldiers attempting to prevent a group of extreme German generals from starting a Fourth Reich, with Erik Estrada co-starring and Ernest Borgnine again playing the role of General Worden, The year Template:Ytv also witnessed a short-lived television series, with no major stars, that lasted only six episodes. In turn, The Dirty Dozen itself is believed to have been inspired by the 1957 Hindi film, Do Aankhen Barah Haath (Two Eyes & Twelve Hands).[9]

Director Joe Dante recruited many of the surviving actors of The Dirty Dozen to voice the Small Soldiers in his film of the same name. Charles Bronson turned him down.[10]

Parody

The television channel Turner Classic Movies paid homage to the movie in a television commercial "Dirty Dozen on Ice" in which scenes of the movie are shown being played out via an Ice show in front of an audience (who are familiar with the story as a 'classic'). Appreciation for the movie is conveyed through the building of the suspense until the audience's desire for Jefferson to achieve his mission is palpable, perhaps hoping he makes it out alive this time. Accolades in the form of flowers are then thrown to the fallen Jefferson.

Quotes

You've got one religious maniac, one malignant dwarf, two near idiots and the rest I don't even want to think about - Army Psychologist's Report on the Dozen.

Well, I can't think of a better way to fight a war - Major Reisman

Notes

  1. ^ p.537 Roberts, Randy & Olsen, James Stuart John Wayne: American 1997 University of Nebraska Press
  2. ^ http://books.google.com.au/books?id=bbkDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA59&dq=%22jack+palance%22+%22dirty+dozen%22
  3. ^ Commentary The Dirty Dozen: 2-Disc Special Edition
  4. ^ Film The Dirty Dozen: 2-Disc Special Edition
  5. ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/sep/03/usa.film
  6. ^ Roger Ebert's review
  7. ^ Steinberg, Cobbett (1980). Film Facts. New York: Facts on File, Inc. p. 25. ISBN 0-87196-313-2.
  8. ^ Amazon.com: The Filthy Thirteen: From the Dustbowl to Hitler's Eagle's Nest :The True Story of the101st Airborne's Most Legendary Squad of Combat Paratroopers: Richard Killblane,Jake McNiece: Books
  9. ^ Bobby Sing (10 February 2008). "Do Ankhen Barah Haath (1957)". Bobby Talks Cinema. Retrieved 2009-05-30.
  10. ^ http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Island/3102/small.htm

External links

The Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission (1985 TV movie)

The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission (1987 TV movie)

The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission (1988 TV movie)

Dirty Dozen: The Series (1988, TV)


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