Abstract
Films about America’s catastrophic interventionist war in Vietnam were deemed too divisive and controversial by the American film industry between the late 1960s and late 1970s. But as the defining event of the period, the conflict inevitably had a profound effect on genre film’s allegorical impulses, none more so than the Hollywood war film and its key mode, the Second World War combat movie. The Dirty Dozen (Aldrich, 1967) was the most famous and influential of the era, and is about a ‘suicidal’ mission behind German lines carried out by a group of US soldiers convicted of serious crimes. The film was a major hit delivering the spectacular violence and rugged heroics fans of action-adventure movies had come to expect. But it also flouts many of the ‘rules’ of the genre: it uses this basic generic framework to ‘smuggle’ in an exploration of the darker side of military life, which challenged the received view of the Second World War as the ‘good war’, just as the myth of American military and moral superiority was being exposed in the jungles of South East Asia.
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Notes
- 1.
The Green Berets made $9.75 million in domestic rentals. See Lawrence Cohn, ‘All-Time Rental Champs’, Variety, 10 May 1993, section C, pp. 76–106.
- 2.
Jeanine Basinger, The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 201.
- 3.
Vietnam also had a major impact on other genres throughout the late 1960s and 1970s. ‘Vietnam westerns’ such as Little Big Man (1970) and Soldier Blue (1970), sought to revise US race history and question traditional myths, and could be read allegorically as damning indictments of domestic racial conflict, namely Civil Rights, or America’s ethnic and ideological war in South East Asia.
- 4.
See Maurice Isserman, and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); and Michael J. Heale, The Sixties in America: History, Politics and Protest (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001).
- 5.
Robert Windeler, ‘Aldrich: To Shut up and Take Your Lumps’, The New York Times, 3 September, 1967, Box 59, ‘Dirty Dozen Clippings Part II’, Robert Aldrich Collection, Louis B. Mayer Library, American Film Institute, Los Angeles, California.
- 6.
Cohn, ‘All-Time Rental’.
- 7.
Edwin T. Arnold, and Eugene L. Miller (eds.), Robert Aldrich: Interviews, Conversations with Filmmakers Series (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004), p. ix.
- 8.
Arnold and Miller, Robert Aldrich: Interviews, p. viii.
- 9.
Ian Cameron and Mark Shivas, ‘Interview with Robert Aldrich’ (1963), in Arnold and Miller (eds.), Robert Aldrich: Interviews, p. 24.
- 10.
Allen Eyles, ‘The Private War of Robert Aldrich’, Films and Filming, September 1967, Box 59, ‘Dirty Dozen Clippings Part II’, Aldrich/AFI.
- 11.
Alain Silver, and James Ursini, What Ever Happened to Robert Aldrich?: His Life and His Films (New York: Limelight Editions, 1995), p. 128.
- 12.
Peter Bogdanovich, ‘Robert Aldrich’ (1964), in Arnold and Miller (eds.), Robert Aldrich: Interviews, p. 39.
- 13.
The Dirty Dozen was a venture of Hyman’s MKH productions.
- 14.
Robert Aldrich to Kenneth Hyman (letter), 28 January, 1966, Box 60, f.9, Aldrich/AFI.
- 15.
William L. Lunch, and Peter W. Sperlich, ‘American Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam’, The Western Political Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 1 (1979).
- 16.
This led to a marked increase in membership of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)—the leading campus anti-war organisation. See Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Peace Now!: American Society and the Ending of the Vietnam War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
- 17.
Daniel C. Hallin, The “Uncensored War”: The Media and Vietnam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 146.
- 18.
Larry H. Addington, America’s War in Vietnam: A Short Narrative History (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2000), p. 112.
- 19.
Tony Williams, Body and Soul: The Cinematic Vision of Robert Aldrich (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2004), p. 251.
- 20.
Aldrich to Hyman, 28 January, 1966.
- 21.
Silver and Ursini, What Ever Happened, p. 125. Attack!, Basinger observes, ‘is an inversion film of the fourth wave type, but one that appears during the third wave as an example of the undercurrent working against the mainstream.’ See Basinger, The World War II Combat Film, p. 307.
- 22.
Alain Silver, ‘Interview with Robert Aldrich’ (1970), in Arnold and Miller (eds.), Robert Aldrich: Interviews, p. 67.
- 23.
Harry Ringel, ‘Up to Date with Robert Aldrich’ (1974), in Arnold and Miller (eds.), Robert Aldrich: Interviews, p. 75.
- 24.
Quoted in Charles E. Neu, America’s Lost War, Vietnam: 1945–1975 (Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson Inc., 2005), p. 134.
- 25.
Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492–present (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), pp. 478–479.
- 26.
Paul Monaco, The Sixties: 1960–1969 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), p. 5.
- 27.
Quoted in Lunch and Sperlich, ‘American Public Opinion’, p. 24.
- 28.
Lunch and Sperlich, ‘American Public Opinion’, p. 32.
- 29.
Aldrich to Hyman, 28 January, 1966.
- 30.
Robert H. O’Brien to Robert Aldrich (letter), 20 May, 1965, Box 60, f.7, Aldrich/AFI.
- 31.
Aldrich to Hyman, 28 January, 1966. See also Nunnally Johnson, ‘The Dirty Dozen’ (unpublished screenplay), 23 September, 1965, (Script Collection, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California).
- 32.
See A Yank in the RAF (1941), International Squadron (1941), and Eagle Squadron (1942), for example. See also David Reynolds, Rich Relations: American Occupation of Britain 1942–1945 (London: HarperCollins, 1995).
- 33.
Contrary to the claim that Johnson’s perspective was dated, there were also a number of other changes that indicate Aldrich considered certain narrative and character elements, in both the book and original screenplay, too complex or uncompromising for mainstream tastes. These will be noted in the following section.
- 34.
Quoted in Edwin T. Arnold and Eugene L. Miller, The Films and Career of Robert Aldrich (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986), p. 125.
- 35.
Quoted in Neu, America’s Lost War, p. 110.
- 36.
John Wayne to Kenneth Hyman (copied letter), Box 59, f.7, Aldrich/AFI.
- 37.
‘Playboy Interview: Lee Marvin’, Playboy, January 1969, p. 59.
- 38.
Quoted in Arnold and Miller, The Films and Career of Robert Aldrich, p. 127. Comparable violence has been depicted in Hollywood and non-American films over the years, contended Aldrich, ‘without any complaints from the American critics’. See Windeler, ‘Aldrich’.
- 39.
Basinger, The World War II Combat Film, pp. 73–74.
- 40.
Basinger, The World War II Combat Film, p. 205.
- 41.
Matheson describes how Gardner’s characterisation in the film is far more sympathetic than the original source novel, and is a key example of how the story’s screen adaptation targets young doves opposed to the draft in the year of the film’s release. In the book, the reader learns he has murdered his girlfriend and is ‘unconcerned with social ideals and unamenable to social control’, Matheson writes. Whereas in the film, by contrast, we learn nothing of his nature or his crimes, and during his execution he ‘looks like a lamb to the slaughter.’ Furthermore, playing on contemporary generational conflict, this takes place in the presence of a group of middle-aged army officials. See Sue Matheson, ‘Individualism, Bentham’s Panopticon, and Counterculture in the Dirty Dozen’, Journal of Popular Film and Television, vol. 36, no. 4 (2009), p. 182.
- 42.
Basinger, The World War II Combat Film, p. 51.
- 43.
Basinger, The World War II Combat Film, p. 30.
- 44.
Christian G. Appy, Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam (Chapel Hill NC.: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993), p. 6.
- 45.
Kathryn Kane, Visions of War: Hollywood Combat Films of World War II, (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982), p. 16.
- 46.
Kane, Visions of War, p. 17.
- 47.
Silver and Ursini, What Ever Happened, p. 128.
- 48.
Stempel notes that the shooting script excises a number of the harsher ironies of the Johnson draft, particularly those involving Franko, and as a result the film ends up as a far more conventional combat film than it could have been. He points out Franko’s efforts to get some of the other men to help him kill Reisman during shooting practice has been cut, as well as his attempt to kill the Major during the attack on the Chateau. In addition, the American Rangers attack on the remainder of the unit as they try to escape in a German-armoured vehicle is also cut by Heller. ‘In Johnson’s script’, Stempel writes, ‘the attack shows that the men are not really different from what they were before—some heroes, some villains.’ In the film, all the members of the unit have become traditional war picture heroes. ‘This reading is, however, problematised by the incineration of the Germans, which is not in Nathanson’s script.’ See Tom Stempel, Screenwriter: The Life and Times of Nunnally Johnson (San Diego: A.S. Barnes, 1980), p. 185.
- 49.
Appy, Working-Class War, p. 246.
- 50.
Matheson, ‘Individualism’, p. 185.
- 51.
Matheson, ‘Individualism’, p. 185.
- 52.
Lester D. Friedman, Citizen Spielberg, (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2006), p. 184.
- 53.
Arnold and Miller, The Films and Career of Robert Aldrich, p. 132.
- 54.
Hans Christoph Kayser, ‘The Sadist and the Clown — the Changing Nazi Image in the American Media’, The Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 10, no. 4, p. 848.
- 55.
Aldrich to Hyman, 28 January, 1966.
- 56.
Arnold and Miller, The Films and Career of Robert Aldrich, p. 126.
- 57.
Brown’s refusal to return to training with his team, the Cleveland Browns, due to delays in filming, and his subsequent retirement from the sport generated considerable publicity for the film in the American press.
- 58.
Dan S. Terrell (memo), 13 April, 1967, Box 61, f.5, Aldrich/AFI.
- 59.
Poster sketch, Box 60, f.9, Aldrich/AFI.
- 60.
Ursini and Silver, What Ever Happened, p. 128.
- 61.
Kenneth Hyman to Robert Aldrich (fax), Box 60, f.9, Aldrich/AFI.
- 62.
Robert Aldrich to Kenneth Hyman (letter), 20 January, 1967, Box 60, f.9, Aldrich/AFI.
- 63.
Herbert Luft, reviewing the film for a Jewish newspaper, complained that without furnishing the viewer with any historical context concerning Nazi atrocities, the allusions would likely escape the less well-informed viewers. See Herbert G. Luft, ‘World War II Revoked on Screen’, B’nai B’rith Messenger, 15 September, 1967, ‘Dirty Dozen Clips Part II’, Aldrich/AFI.
- 64.
Monaco, The Sixties, pp. 184–185.
- 65.
Monaco, The Sixties, p. 186.
- 66.
Pauline Kael, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1968), p. 47.
- 67.
David Thomson, A Biographical Dictionary of Cinema (London: Secker and Warburg, 1975), p. 2.
- 68.
Bosley Crowther, ‘Screen: Brutal Tale of 12 Angry Men; “Dirty Dozen” Rumbles into the Capitol’, The New York Times, 16 June 1967, www.nytimes.com (home page).
- 69.
Del Carnes, ‘“Dirty Dozen’ Not For Nit-Pickers”’, The Denver Post, date unknown, ‘Dirty Dozen Press Clippings Part II’, Aldrich/AFI.
- 70.
Bosley Crowther, ‘Screen: ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ Arrives; Careers of Murderers Pictures as Farce’, The New York Times, 14 August, 1967, www.nytimes.com (home page).
- 71.
Paine Knickerbocker, ‘The Savage Dirty Dozen’, San Francisco Chronicle, 29 June 1967, ‘Clippings Part I’, Aldrich/AFI.
- 72.
Robert Aldrich to ‘Millie’ (letter), 30 June, 1967, Box 61, f.7, Aldrich/AFI.
- 73.
Knickerbocker, ‘The Savage’.
- 74.
John Mahoney, “Dirty Dozen’ Should Be One of MGM’s Big Moneymakers”, The Hollywood Reporter, 16 June, 1967, The Dirty Dozen microfiche, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverley Hills, California.
- 75.
Kevin Thomas, “Dirty Dozen at Paramount”, Los Angeles Times, 28 June, 1967, The Dirty Dozen microfiche/AMPAS.
- 76.
Stephen Farber, ‘The Dirty Dozen’, Film Quarterly, vol. xxi, no. 2 (1967–1968), pp. 36–38.
- 77.
Farber, ‘The Dirty Dozen’, p. 38.
- 78.
Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Peace Now!, p. 34.
- 79.
Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Peace Now!, p. 102.
- 80.
Farber, ‘The Dirty Dozen’, p. 38.
- 81.
Farber, ‘The Dirty Dozen’.
- 82.
Farber, ‘The Dirty Dozen’, pp. 39–40.
- 83.
Farber, ‘The Dirty Dozen’, p. 40.
- 84.
Farber, ‘The Dirty Dozen’, p. 40.
- 85.
Richard Schickel, ‘Harsh Moral from a Grisly Film’, Life, 21 July, 1967, The Dirty Dozen microfiche/AMPAS.
- 86.
Arthur Knight, ‘SR Goes to the Movies: Games Martial and Martial’, Saturday Review, June 17, 1967, The Dirty Dozen microfiche/AMPAS.
- 87.
Farber, ‘The Dirty Dozen’, p. 40.
- 88.
Quoted in ‘The Dirty Dozen’, Film Facts, vol. 10, no. 13 (1967), ‘Dirty Dozen Clippings Part II’, Aldrich/AFI.
- 89.
Robert Brent Toplin, History by Hollywood: The Use and Abuse of the American Past (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), see pp. 156–158.
- 90.
For an in-depth discussion of the ‘left’ and ‘right’ cycles of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and their essential similarities see chapters 9 and 10 of Robert B. Ray, A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930–1980 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).
- 91.
Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: Free Press, 2001), p. 141.
- 92.
Matheson, ‘Individualism’, p. 187.
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Symmons, T. (2016). ‘Having Our Cake and Eating It’: The Dirty Dozen (1967), the World War II Combat Film and the Vietnam War. In: The New Hollywood Historical Film. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52930-5_4
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