Kelly's Heroes
Short description
Kelly's Heroes follows an American soldier in the European theatre of the Second World War who learns from a captured German officer about a fortune in gold bars held in a bank behind enemy lines. Rather than pass the information up the chain of command, he assembles a small group of fellow soldiers willing to go absent without leave and cross into hostile territory for their own gain. The enterprise draws in a cynical master sergeant, a tank commander with an unorthodox style, and a supply sergeant, while a self-important general mistakes the private expedition for a major offensive and follows with his own force. The film is a war comedy built around a heist rather than a conventional combat story, with the absurdity of the situation driving much of the action.
Brian G. Hutton directed, working from a screenplay by Troy Kennedy Martin. Kelly's Heroes was his second feature as director, following Where Eagles Dare in 1968 and preceding Night Watch in 1973. Clint Eastwood leads as Sergeant First Class Kelly, with Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland, Don Rickles, Carroll O'Connor and Gavin MacLeod among the principal cast. Made for about four million dollars and released in June 1970, it returned roughly five million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.6 out of 10 from around 58,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.4 from over 850 votes, while a critics' rating of 6.7 from 24 reviews places it slightly below the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- At the beginning of the film, Telly Savalas’s character (1922-1974) needs to find the best place to stay in the French city of Nancy, and he uses a Michelin tourist guidebook. Allied forces actually used similar guidebooks during World War II. During the planning of the Normandy operation, Allied headquarters were genuinely concerned that troops might get lost if the Germans removed road signs and other indicators. The US government quietly ordered the reprinting of 1939 guidebooks, as no new ones had been published due to the war. So when Allied troops landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944, officers had Michelin guidebooks with them, and they carried them throughout the war.
- The film was shot mostly in Yugoslavia because in 1970, the Yugoslav army still had many Sherman tanks.
- Approximately 20 minutes of footage was cut before the film's release, at the direction of James T. Aubrey (1918-1994), who headed the MGM film company. The film was initially titled “The Warriors,” then changed to “Kelly's Warriors” during post-production, and finally became “Kelly's Heroes.” Clint Eastwood admitted in an interview that he disliked how the studio re-edited the film, as the deleted scenes delved deeper into the characters and generally made the film better overall.
- Clint Eastwood agreed to participate in the film primarily because Don Siegel (1912-1991), his favorite director, was supposed to direct it, and the actor also had a warm, friendly relationship with him. Unfortunately, Siegel encountered some problems during the post-production of the Western “Two Mules for Sister Sara” (1969), so he left the “Kelly's Heroes” project, and Brian J. Hutton (1935-2014) became the film’s director. By that point, Eastwood had already signed a contract to film, so he couldn’t leave the project.
- In the film, Kelly and his men steal gold with a total value of $12 million. During World War II, gold cost $35 per troy ounce. Today, it costs almost 36 times more – around $1,000 per ounce. That brings the total to between $360 and $400 million. Taking inflation into account, if everyone had kept their bars until today, the total value of the gold would be between $2 billion and $2.4 billion. If divided into 12 parts, each participant in the adventure (or their heirs) would receive around $200 million.
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