Information about The Dirty Dozen

The Dirty Dozen
Original film poster
Directed by	Robert Aldrich
Produced by	Kenneth Hyman
Written by	Novel: E.M. Nathanson Screenplay: Nunnally Johnson Lukas Heller
Starring	Lee Marvin Ernest Borgnine Charles Bronson Jim Brown
Music by	Frank De Vol
Distributed by	MGM
Release date(s)	June 15, 1967
Running time	150 min.
Country	United States
Language	English French German
IMDb profile

The Dirty Dozen is a 1967 World War II action-war film directed by Robert Aldrich, from the novel by E.M. Nathanson, featuring 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. Such themes obliquely refer to the Vietnam War.

Plot

In England, in the spring of 1944, as Allied forces in the UK prepare for the D-Day invasion. Major John Reisman (Lee Marvin) is ordered to witness the hanging execution of a U.S. soldier. Reisman, an OSS officer, then meets with Regular Army Major General Worden (Ernest Borgnine). In the anteroom to the general's office, personal enmity surges when Maj. Reisman and Col. Everett Dasher Breed (Robert Ryan) confront each other.

Entering the meeting room, Maj. Reisman encounters friend Maj. Armbruster (George Kennedy) who advises him to mind his manners, establishing Reisman as an individualist. Tension further mounts when Gen. Worden has Reisman hold his salute for a long time, before acknowledging it. Reisman sits before a panel of staff officers; Gen. Worden reviews his service record, noting aloud: "Lots of fireworks", Worden notes ". . . . and very short on discipline . . . . very short on discipline"; yet his bravery and operational successes are commended, despite exceeding orders and insubordination. Maj. Reisman ironically comments, "I didn't write those reports." Asked to explain his meaning, he adds, "I'm only interested in results, not embroidery." The offended staff officers dress him down for impertinence. Afterwards, Reisman is assigned his mission: training twelve American soldiers (all either serving lengthy prison terms or on death row), attack a Wehrmacht target behind enemy lines, kill as many enemy as possible, and return to Allied lines.



Reisman asks what is the designated target, noting that if he is being offered leadership of the mission, it is reasonable to know the target's identity.

Worden: It's not, as you say, being "offered."

Reisman: I'm volunteering.

Worden: Exactly, Major. You know, I'm glad you look at these things so realistically!

The plan: a large château near Rennes, in Brittany, is used as a retreat for senior Wehrmacht officers. In preparation for the D-Day invasion, Maj. Reisman's commando team parachute in, kill the officers, and destroy the château, to disrupt the Wehrmacht chain of command against the D-Day invasion. The surviving soldiers will receive "special consideration for those who really distinguished themselves". The General asks the Major for comment:

Worden: Well, what do you say, Major?

Reisman: I'd say it confirms a suspicion I've had for some time now, sir.

Denton: You think we might share that suspicion, Major?

Reisman: Yes, sir, I think you should. Since I'll have to assume that we're over here to try to win the war, I don't think it'll pay to advertise the fact that one of the men that we're working for has to be a raving lunatic.

The story proper, in three parts, begins: (i) the training, (ii) an FTX (field training exercise) wherein the Dozen prove their soldierly worth and (iii) the suicide attack on the château.

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 an FTX that suits Major Reisman's professional and personal goals in his feud with Colonel Breed. In the course of the first part, the soldiers represent the good, bad, and mediocre of American society during the war time shown. Yet director Aldrich's themes are externally directed at the current American war against Communist Vietnam.

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: Franco goes up without being seen; Fourteen: Zero-hour, Jiménez cuts the cable, Franco cuts the phone; Fifteen: Franco goes in where the others have been; Sixteen: we all come out like it's Halloween."

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 and Reisman enter the château as guests, register and go to their room, where they let in several men, but the plan goes awry when a German woman walks into the room where Maggot is hiding. He pokes his bayonet to her throat, pushes her out to the hallway. Yielding to his sadism, he urges her to scream, then stabs her. Downstairs, the Wehrmacht officers mistake her death scream for passion, only Maggot's gunfire alerts them of the attack. Panic ensues, and is aggravated by Gilpin's (Ben Carruthers) exploding the rooftop radio-telephone antenna, killing himself in the process. 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 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 alive, a brutal tactic in the Nazi style. 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 (Richard Jaekel) and Franco escape in a German heavy half-tracked transport (hot wired by the criminally-resourceful Franco); Reisman, Bowren and one of the Dirty Dozen, Wladislaw, survive the suicide mission after Franco having boasted that they've made it before getting shot in the back by a surviving German soldier.

The conclusion shows the generals, who earlier berated Maj. Reisman, suddenly proud of him, saying how glad they are that "you made it back"; prompting Reisman and Sgt. Bowren to smirk over to Wladislaw, who replies: "Killin' generals could get to be a habit with me".

Cast

• Lee Marvin as Maj. John Reisman
• Ernest Borgnine as Maj. Gen. Worden
• Charles Bronson as Joseph T. Wladislaw
• Jim Brown as Robert T. Jefferson
• John Cassavetes as Victor P. Franko
• Richard Jaeckel as Sgt. Clyde Bowren
• George Kennedy as Maj. Max Armbruster
• Trini Lopez as Pedro Jiminez
• Ralph Meeker as Capt. Stuart Kinder
• Robert Ryan as Col. Everett Dasher Breed
• Telly Savalas as Archer J. Maggott
• Donald Sutherland as Vernon L. Pinkley
• Clint Walker as Samson Posey
• Robert Webber as Brig. Gen. Denton
• Tom Busby as Milo Vladek
• Ben Carruthers as Glenn Gilpin
• Stuart Cooper as Roscoe Lever
• Robert Phillips as Cpl. Carl Morgan

Reception and criticism

For the 1960s, The Dirty Dozen was an unconventional, extremely violent war movie. The violence shocked Midwesterner Roger Ebert, who, in his first year as a movie 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''.

Truth or fiction?

• As a preface to the novel, author E.M. Nathanson states that he heard of a legend of men like these, but found no record of it. As stated in both the movie and the book, it would be exceedingly unlikely that anyone would be able to take a group of violent sociopaths with an inborn hatred of all authority and transform them into a disciplined, motivated and highly skilled commando unit that willingly embarks upon what can best described as a suicide mission. It is felt that much of the popularity of the film (then and now) stems from the audience strongly identifying with the trouble making, boat rocking Major Reisman who proceeds to pull off the impossible much to the chagrin of the brasshats.
• Executions for capital crimes in the U.S. Army at that time were not uncommon, though the most famous U.S. military execution, that of Eddie Slovik, was the only one for the crime of desertion. HMP Shepton Mallet prison was entirely staffed by American military personnel during this period. Under the provisions of the Visiting Forces Act of 1942, a total of eighteen American servicemen were executed within the prison walls. Sixteen were hanged in the execution block and two were shot by firing squad in the prison yard.
• Though there are frequent rumors of the existence of such units, The Dirty Dozen is based on the Filthy Thirteen, a small group of airborne demolition experts whose story was documented by a book by the same name.^[1] Unlike the Dirty Dozen, the Filthy Thirteen was not a unit composed of convicts, though some in the unit had criminal records. The leader of the Filthy Thirteen was Jake McNeece who wrote the book. He has lectured all over Europe, especially during D-Day celebrations (50th and 60th anniversary). He lives in Oklahoma. He retired as a Private as he was continually demoted for insubordination.

Trivia

• 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. It was a best-seller on publication in 1965.
• 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 too good. 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 Jiménez (Trini López) character was to have been heroic, igniting the dynamite that would destroy the château.
• Lee Marvin (Marines), Telly Savalas and Charles Bronson (Army), Ernest Borgnine (Navy) and Clint Walker (Merchant Marine) all served in World War II.
• Donald Sutherland was a late inclusion, replacing the actor who quit, because he thought the role beneath him.
• Robert Aldrich was told he could win a best-director Oscar if he deleted the scene of Jim Brown dropping hand grenades into the bomb shelter vents. The scene was controversial, because a Black man was killing white Germans (including women) locked inside the cellar. Aldrich considered it, but let it remain to show that war is hell.
• Jack Palance refused "Archer Maggot" role, Telly Savalas's character.
• Major Reisman was based on John Miara, of Malden, Massachusetts, who was a close friend of Lee Marvin, while both served in the Marine Corps during WW II.
• Trini López's character was killed early after his agent unwisely demanded more money. Instead of conceding, director Aldrich killed the character.
• Jim Brown's character is named "Napoleon Jefferson" in the original U.S. trailer.
• In the "Last Supper" scene, Maggot is in the Judas traitor position, foreshadowing his betraying the team during their mission.
• Jim Brown announced his retirement from professional football during the filming.
• Lee Marvin, a WWII combat veteran, 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.

References