The Dirty Dozen

The Dirty Dozen is a 1967 war film directed by Robert Aldrich and starring Lee Marvin, with an ensemble supporting cast including Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Richard Jaeckel, George Kennedy, Trini Lopez, Ralph Meeker, Robert Ryan, Telly Savalas, Clint Walker and Robert Webber. Set in 1944 during World War II, the film follows a penal military unit of twelve convicts as they are trained as commandos by the Allies for a suicide mission ahead of the Normandy landings.

The screenplay is based on the 1965 bestseller by E. M. Nathanson, which in turn was inspired by a real-life World War II unit of behind-the-lines demolition specialists from the 101st Airborne Division named the "Filthy Thirteen". Filming took place at the MGM British Studios.

The Dirty Dozen was released on June 15, 1967 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and was a box office success, grossing $45 million against a $5 million budget. It won the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing at the 40th Academy Awards. In 2001, the American Film Institute placed it at number 65 on their 100 Years... 100 Thrills list. The film spawned several television film sequels, including The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission (1985), The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission (1987), and The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission (1988). A remake was announced in 2019 by Warner Bros.

Plot

In March 1944, OSS officer Major John Reisman is ordered by the commander of ADSEC in Britain, Major General Sam Worden, to undertake "Project Amnesty", a top secret mission to turn a dozen of the United States Army's worst convicts into highly skilled commandos to eliminate Wehrmacht officers at a château near Rennes, disrupting the German chain of command in northern France ahead of D-Day. Any convicts who survive the mission will receive a pardon.

Reisman meets the twelve convicts (including the mob-associated robber Franko, former major Wladislaw, black soldier Jefferson, the gentle giant and hazing-damaged Posey, and religious zealot and psychopath Maggott) at a military prison operated by the Military Police Corps. These five are condemned to death for murder, while the others (Gilpin, Pinkley, Sawyer, Lever, Bravos, Vladek, and Jiminez) face lengthy sentences, including hard labor for crimes such as assault, larceny, mugging and impersonation. Reisman quickly establishes his authority, but the group remains disgruntled, often instigated by a defiant Franko. Overseen by MPs led by Sergeant Bowren, the convicts gradually learn to operate together when they are forced to build their own training camp. However, an act of insubordination by Franko, who convinces the team to refuse to shower in cold water, results in the men's shaving and wash kits being withheld as punishment, leading the group to be nicknamed the "Dirty Dozen." Reisman is privately pleased at the insurrection, the first indication that the erstwhile collection of individualists is beginning to bond as a team. The convicts are psychoanalyzed by Captain Kinder, who warns Reisman there is a chance that at least seven of them will likely kill him if given the chance and that Maggott is by far the most dangerous.

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. Breed is unaware of Project Amnesty and attempts to discover Reisman's mission, including infiltration of the Dirty Dozen's camp. With the eager assistance of the convicts, Reisman kicks Breed and his men out of the camp. Later, Breed's testimony combined with Reisman rewarding the Dirty Dozen with the services of prostitutes for completing their training, prompts the staff to consider terminating the project. Reisman's friend and liaison, Major Armbruster, suggests a test of the convicts' training: have them operate against Breed's men in large scale maneuvers. Using brazen subterfuge, the Dirty Dozen commandeers a Red Cross ambulance; posing as a team of medics delivering a wounded soldier, they infiltrate the opposition’s headquarters, capturing its command at gunpoint. Impressed at the cohesiveness of the audacious tactics, Worden allows Reisman to resume his mission.

The Dozen parachutes into northern France. Wladislaw and Reisman infiltrate the chateau disguised as German officers and lower ropes for the rest of the team. Maggott murders an officer's spouse in the chateau and opens fire at his teammates, revealing the Dozen's presence too early, before being killed by Jefferson. The gunfire alerts the Wehrmacht officers, and they retreat to a locked underground bomb shelter with their guests. The unit pours gasoline through the ventilation shafts and ignites it with hand grenades. The chateau explodes, killing the occupants, while the survivors of the Dozen engage in a firefight with chateau guards and arriving reinforcements. Reisman, Bowren and Wladislaw are the only ones to escape back to England alive. Worden pardons Wladislaw, who is given an opportunity to resume his service in the armed forces.

In a voiceover, Armbruster tells the next of kin of the rest of the Dozen that "they lost their lives in the line of duty".

Cast

Production

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:

Down to the road block, we've just begun.
The guards are through.
The Major's men are on a spree.
Major and Wladislaw go through the door.
Pinkley stays out in the drive.
The Major gives the rope a fix.
Wladislaw throws the hook to heaven.
Jiminez has got a date.
The other guys go up the line.
Sawyer and Gilpin are in the pen.
Posey guards Points Five and Seven.
Wladislaw and the Major go down to delve.
Franko goes up without being seen.
Zero Hour: Jiminez cuts the cable; Franko cuts the phone.
Franko goes in where the others have been.
We all come out like it's Halloween.

Casting

The cast included many American World War II veterans including Lee Marvin, Robert Webber and Robert Ryan (U.S. Marine Corps); Telly Savalas and George Kennedy (U.S. Army); Charles Bronson (U.S. Army Air Forces); Ernest Borgnine (U.S. Navy); and Richard Jaeckel and Clint Walker (U.S. Merchant Marine).

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 Maggot" 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 (in the film, Ben Carruthers' character Glenn Gilpin is given the task of blowing up the radio tower while Busby's character Milo Vladek is shot in front of the château). Lopez's character dies off-camera during the parachute drop that begins the mission. The scene involving the impersonation of a general was to have been done by Clint Walker, but when he stated that 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 thirty 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 was already the NFL's all-time leading rusher, was well ahead statistically of the second-leading rusher, and his team had won the 1964 NFL Championship), he chose acting. In Spike Lee's 2002 documentary Jim Brown: All-American 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

thumb|Aldbury – scene of the wargame

thumb|Bradenham Manor – Wargames HQ

The production was filmed in the United Kingdom during the summer of 1966.

The jump school scene was shot 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.</blockquote>

Heavy rains throughout the summer caused filming delays of several months, leading to $1 million in overruns and 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.

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 that 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. He does not state where he acquired the name, but Arch Whitehouse coined the name "Dirty Dozen" as the 12 enlisted men of the airborne section that became the "Filthy Thirteen" after the lieutenant joined their ranks. In Arch Whitehouse's article in True Magazine, he claimed that all the enlisted men were full-blood Indians, but, in reality, only their leader Jake McNeice was one-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 actually a demolitions section with the 101st Airborne, and had a mission to secure bridges over the Douve on D-Day.

Barbara Maloney, the daughter of John Agnew, a private in the Filthy Thirteen, told the American Valor Quarterly that her father felt that 30 percent 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.

Release

Theatrical

The Dirty Dozen premiered at the Capitol Theatre in New York City on June 15, 1967 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 Varietys 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.

Critical response

Upon release, the film received positive reviews from critics. It holds an 82% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 55 reviews, with an average rating of 8.00/10. The critical consensus reads, "Amoral on the surface and exuding testosterone, The Dirty Dozen utilizes combat and its staggering cast of likable scoundrels to deliver raucous entertainment." On release, the film was criticized for its level of violence. Roger Ebert, who was in his first year as a film reviewer for the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote sarcastically,

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,

Crowther called some of the portrayals "bizarre and bold":