The Dirty Dozen


The Dirty Dozen is a 1967 war film starring Lee Marvin and featuring an ensemble supporting cast including Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, George Kennedy, Robert Ryan, Telly Savalas, Robert Webber and Donald Sutherland. The film, which was directed by Robert Aldrich, was filmed in the UK at MGM-British Studios and released by MGM. It was a box office success and won the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing at the 40th Academy Awards in 1968. In 2001, the American Film Institute placed the film at number 65 on their 100 Years... 100 Thrills list.
The screenplay is based on the 1965 bestseller by E. M. Nathanson which was inspired by a real-life WWII unit of behind-the-lines demolition specialists from the 101st Airborne Division named the "Filthy Thirteen".

Plot

In March 1944, OSS officer Major John Reisman is ordered by the commander of ADSEC in Great Britain, Major General Sam Worden, to undertake Project Amnesty: a top-secret mission to train some of the US Army's worst prisoners and turn them into commandos to be sent on a virtual suicide mission just before D-Day. The target is a château near Rennes in Brittany where dozens of high-ranking German officers will be eliminated in order to disrupt the chain of command of the Wehrmacht in Northern France before the Allied invasion. Reisman is told he can tell the prisoners that those who survive will be pardoned.
Reisman meets the twelve convicts at a US Army prison run by MPs. Five are condemned to death while the others face lengthy sentences which include hard labor. Reisman establishes his authority by stamping on the face of the rebellious Franko who attacked him. With a detachment of MPs led by Sergeant Bowren acting as guards, the prisoners gradually learn how to operate together when they are forced to build their own training camp. However, when an act of insubordination is instigated by Franko, all shaving and wash kits are withheld as punishment which leads to their nickname "The Dirty Dozen". During their training the prisoners are psychoanalyzed by Captain Kinder who warns Reisman that they would all quite likely kill him if given the chance; and rapist/killer Maggott is by far the most dangerous.
With their commando training almost complete, the "Dirty Dozen" are sent for parachute training at a facility commanded by Reisman's nemesis Colonel Everett Dasher Breed of the 101st Airborne Division. When Reisman's men run afoul of Breed, especially after Pinkley – under Reisman's orders – poses as a general to inspect Breed's best troops, the Airborne colonel attempts to discover Reisman's mission by having two of his men go beat a confession out of Wladislaw. The convicts blame Reisman for the attack but realize later it was a mistake after Breed and his men arrive at their base looking for answers. Reisman infiltrates his own camp and gets the convicts to disarm Breed's paratroops, forcing the colonel to leave in humiliation.
However, after Reisman gets prostitutes for the men to celebrate the completion of their training, General Worden and his chief of staff, Brigadier General Denton throw the book at him. Denton, who sides with Breed's testimony, urges General Worden to terminate Project Amnesty and send them back to prison for execution of their sentences. Reisman defends the prisoners ferociously saying each one of them is worth ten of Breed's men. Reisman's friend, Major Max Armbruster, suggests a test: During upcoming war games in Devon, the "Dirty Dozen" will attempt to capture Colonel Breed's headquarters. The unit does indeed infiltrate and captures Breed's headquarters using various unorthodox tactics including deception, theft, and impersonation. General Worden is impressed and green-lights Reisman's mission.
The men are flown to northern France but Jimenez dies breaking his neck during the parachute drop. With a man down, the mission proceeds with German-speaking Wladislaw and Reisman infiltrating the château disguised as German officers. However, all surprise is lost when the psychopathic Maggott begins shooting at anyone before he is killed. With the sound of gunfire, the Wehrmacht officers and companions retreat to an underground bomb shelter/cellar. After the entrance is barred, they are killed by grenades and gasoline which has been poured down ventilation shafts. In the end, only Reisman, Bowren and Wladislaw escape alive. Back in England, a voiceover from Armbruster confirms that General Worden exonerated the sole surviving member of the Dirty Dozen and communicated to the next of kin of the rest that "they lost their lives in the line of duty".

Cast

Writing

Although Robert Aldrich had failed to buy the rights to E.M. Nathanson's novel The Dirty Dozen while it was just an outline, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer succeeded in May 1963. On publication, the novel became a best-seller in 1965. It was adapted to the screen by veteran scriptwriter and producer, Nunnally Johnson, and Lukas Heller. A repeated rhyme was written into the script where the twelve actors verbally recite the details of the attack in a rhyming chant to help them remember their roles while approaching the mission target:
  1. Down to the road block, we've just begun.
  2. The guards are through.
  3. The Major's men are on a spree.
  4. Major and Wladislaw go through the door.
  5. Pinkley stays out in the drive.
  6. The Major gives the rope a fix.
  7. Wladislaw throws the hook to heaven.
  8. Jiminez has got a date.
  9. The other guys go up the line.
  10. Sawyer and Gilpen are in the pen.
  11. Posey guards Points Five and Seven.
  12. Wladislaw and the Major go down to delve.
  13. Franko goes up without being seen.
  14. Zero Hour: Jimenez cuts the cable; Franko cuts the phone.
  15. Franko goes in where the others have been.
  16. We all come out like it's Halloween.

    Casting

The cast included many World War II US veterans including Lee Marvin, Robert Webber and Robert Ryan, Telly Savalas and George Kennedy, Charles Bronson, Ernest Borgnine and Clint Walker.
John Wayne was the original choice for Reisman, but he turned down the role because he objected to the adultery present in the original script, which featured the character having a relationship with an Englishwoman whose husband was fighting on the Continent. Jack Palance refused the "Archer Maggott" role when they would not rewrite the script to make his character lose his racism; Telly Savalas took the role instead.
Six of the dozen were experienced American stars, while 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 Lopez left the film early, the death scene of Lopez's character where he blew himself up with the radio tower was given to Busby. Lopez's character dies off-camera during the parachute drop that begins the mission. The impersonation of the general scene was to have been done by Clint Walker, but when he thought the scene was demeaning to his character, who was a Native American, Aldrich picked out Sutherland for the bit.
Jim Brown, the Cleveland Browns running back, announced his retirement from American football at age 29 during the making of the film. The owner of the Browns, Art Modell, demanded Brown choose between football and acting. With Brown's considerable accomplishments in the sport, he chose acting. In Spike Lee's 2002 documentary Modell admitted he made a huge mistake in forcing Jim Brown to choose between football and Hollywood. He said that 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".

Filming

The production was filmed in UK in the summer of 1966. Interiors and set pieces took place at MGM British Studios, Borehamwood where the château set was built under the direction of art director William Hutchinson. It was wide and high, surrounded with of heather, 400 ferns, 450 shrubs, 30 spruce trees and six weeping willows. Construction of the faux château proved problematic. The script required its explosion, but it was so solid, 70 tons of explosives would have been required for the effect. Instead, a cork and plastic section was destroyed.
Exteriors were shot throughout southeast England. The credit scenes at the American military prison — alluded in the movie to be Shepton Mallett — were shot in a courtyard at Ashridge House in Hertfordshire. Co-star Richard Jaeckel recalled that when the introductory lineup scene was first shot, Aldrich, who liked to play pranks on his actors, initially placed Charles Bronson between Clint Walker and Donald Sutherland, which provoked an angry response from the diminutive Bronson, making Aldrich laugh.
The jump school scene was at the former entrance to RAF Hendon in London. The wargame was filmed in and around the village of Aldbury. Bradenham Manor was the Wargames' Headquarters. Beechwood Park School in Markyate was also used as a location during the school's summer term, where the training camp and tower were built and shot in the grounds and the village itself as parts of "Devonshire". The main house was also used, appearing in the film as a military hospital. After filming finished, the training camp huts were relocated and used as sports equipment storage for the school's playing fields. Residents of Chenies, Buckinghamshire complained to MGM when filming caused damage around their village.
While making the film, some of the cast members gave an interview to ABC Film review, in which they contrasted their own real wartime ranks to their officer roles in the film:
George Kennedy: Took me two years to make Private First Class.
Lee Marvin: I didn't even make that in the Marines.
Ernest Borgnine: I was beneath notice in the Navy
For punks, we're doing all right, said Marvin. I wonder how the generals are doing?

Heavy rains throughout the summer caused filming delays of several months leading to $1 million in overruns, bringing the final cost to $5 million. Principal photography wrapped at MGM-British Studios in September 1966 with post-production to be completed at MGM studios in Culver City, California.

Release

The Dirty Dozen premiered at the Capitol Theatre in New York City on June 15, 1967 and opened at the 34th Street East theatre the following day. Despite being shot in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, the film was initially shown in 70 mm which cut off 15% of the film and resulted in a grainy look.

Reception

Box office

The Dirty Dozen was a massive commercial success. In its first five days in New York, the film grossed $103,849 from 2 theatres. Produced on a budget of $5.4 million, it earned theatrical rentals of $7.5 million in its first five weeks from 1,152 bookings and 625 prints, one of the fastest-grossing films at the time; however, on Variety's weekly box office survey, based on a sample of key city theatres, it only reached number two at the U.S. box office behind You Only Live Twice until it finally reached number one in its sixth week. It eventually earned rentals of $24.2 million in the United States and Canada from a gross of $45.3 million. It was the fourth-highest-grossing film of 1967 and MGM's highest-grossing film of the year. It was also a hit in France, with admissions of 4,672,628.
To coincide with its release, Dell Comics published a comic The Dirty Dozen in October 1967.

Critical reception

The film currently holds an 85% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 39 reviews. On release, the film was criticised for its level of violence. Roger Ebert, who was in his first year as a film reviewer for the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote sarcastically:
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.

In another contemporaneous review, Bosley Crowther called it "an astonishingly wanton war film" and a "studied indulgence of sadism that is morbid and disgusting beyond words"; he also noted:
It is not simply that this violent picture of an American military venture is based on a fictional supposition that is silly and irresponsible.... But to have this bunch of felons a totally incorrigible lot, some of them psychopathic, and to try to make us believe that they would be committed by any American general to carry out an exceedingly important raid that a regular commando group could do with equal efficiency—and certainly with greater dependability—is downright preposterous.

Crowther called some of the portrayals "bizarre and bold":
Marvin's taut, pugnacious playing of the major... is tough and terrifying. John Cassavetes is wormy and noxious as a psychopath condemned to death, and Telly Savalas is swinish and maniacal as a religious fanatic and sex degenerate. Charles Bronson as an alienated murderer, Richard Jaeckel as a hard-boiled military policeman, and Jim Brown as a white-hating Negro stand out in the animalistic group.

Art Murphy of Variety was more positive, calling it "an exciting World War II pre-D-Day drama" with an "excellent cast" and a "very good screenplay" with "a ring of authenticity to it".
The Time Out Film Guide notes that over the years, "The Dirty Dozen has taken its place alongside that other commercial classic, The Magnificent Seven". The review then states:
The violence which liberal critics found so offensive has survived intact. Aldrich sets up dispensable characters with no past and no future, as Marvin reprieves a bunch of death row prisoners, forges them into a tough fighting unit, and leads them on a suicide mission into Nazi France. Apart from the values of team spirit, cudgeled by Marvin into his dropout group, Aldrich appears to be against everything: anti-military, anti-Establishment, anti-women, anti-religion, anti-culture, anti-life. Overriding such nihilism is the super-crudity of Aldrich's energy and his humour, sufficiently cynical to suggest that the whole thing is a game anyway, a spectacle that demands an audience.

Awards and nominations

Also, the film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:
Three years after The Dirty Dozen was released, Too Late the Hero, a film also directed by Aldrich, was described as a "kind of sequel to The Dirty Dozen". The 1969 Michael Caine film Play Dirty follows a similar theme of convicts recruited as soldiers. The 1977 Italian war film directed by Enzo G. Castellari, The Inglorious Bastards, is a loose remake of The Dirty Dozen. Quentin Tarantino's 2009 Inglourious Basterds was derived from the English-language title of the Castellari film.
Several TV films were produced in the mid-to-late 1980s which capitalized on the popularity of the first film. Lee Marvin, Richard Jaeckel and Ernest Borgnine reprised their roles for ' in 1985, leading a group of military convicts in a mission to kill a German general who was plotting to assassinate Adolf Hitler. In ', Telly Savalas, who had played the role of the psychotic Maggott in the original film, 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. depicts 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. In 1988, Fox aired a short-lived television series starring Ben Murphy. Among the cast was John Slattery, who played Private Leeds in eight of the show's 11 episodes.
The surviving cast members of the original film provided the voices of the toy soldiers in Joe Dante's Small Soldiers.
In 2014, Warner Bros. announced that director David Ayer would be the director of a live-action adaptation of the DC Comics property Suicide Squad, and Ayer has gone on to say that the film is "the Dirty Dozen with super villains", citing the original film as inspiration. In December 2019 Warner Brothers announced it was developing a remake with David Ayer set to direct.

Historical authenticity

Nathanson states in the prologue to his novel The Dirty Dozen, that while he heard a legend that such a unit may have existed, he incorrectly heard they were convicts. He was unable to find any corroboration in the archives of the US Army in Europe. He instead turned his research of convicted felons into the subsequent novel. While he does not state from where he acquired the name, but Arch Whitehouse coined the name "Dirty Dozen" as the 12 enlisted men of the airborne section that would become the "Filthy Thirteen" after the lieutenant joined their ranks. In Arch Whitehouse's article in True Magazine, he claimed all the enlisted men were full-blood Indians, but in reality only their leader, Jake McNeice was quarter Choctaw. The parts of the Filthy Thirteen story that carried over into Nathanson's book were not bathing until the jump into Normandy, their disrespect for military authority, and the pre-invasion party. The Filthy Thirteen was in actuality a demolitions section with a mission to secure bridges over the Douve on D-Day.
A similarly named unit called the "Filthy Thirteen" was an airborne demolition unit documented in the eponymous book, and this unit's exploits inspired the fictional account. Barbara Maloney, the daughter of John Agnew, a private in the Filthy Thirteen, told the American Valor Quarterly that her father felt that 30% of the film's content was historically correct, including a scene where officers are captured. Unlike the Dirty Dozen, the Filthy Thirteen were not convicts; however, they were men prone to drinking and fighting and often spent time in the stockade.