The Dirty Dozen
Short description
Set during World War II, The Dirty Dozen follows Major John Reisman, an American officer whose unorthodox methods have strained relations with his superiors even as his record produces results. He is handed a hazardous assignment: take twelve military prisoners awaiting execution for violent crimes and train them for a raid on a château in occupied France where senior Nazi officers are gathering. In exchange, the men are offered a chance at freedom. The project demands turning a dozen self-interested convicts into a functioning unit before they are sent into enemy territory.
Robert Aldrich directed the film, the eleventh of seventeen features he made in chronological order, following The Flight of the Phoenix and preceding The Grissom Gang. Nunnally Johnson and Lukas Heller wrote the screenplay, Kenneth Hyman produced, and Lee Marvin leads the cast as Reisman, with Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes and Richard Jaeckel among the principal players. Made for about five million dollars, it returned roughly forty-five million worldwide.
On IMDb the film holds 7.7 from around 78,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.6 from roughly 1,400 votes, while a critics' rating stands at 8 from fifty-four reviews, placing critical and audience assessments of the film closely together.
What's left behind the scenes
- The department responsible for the castle set designs truly outdid themselves. The script required the castle to be blown up, but the set was built so sturdily that it would have taken 70 tons of explosives to destroy it. Therefore, part of the building had to be rebuilt – this time from cork.
- Once, at a reception in London, Lee Marvin got so drunk that he made an indecent proposal to a woman older than himself, and in a particularly vulgar manner. Because he was slurring his words, she politely asked him to repeat himself, which he did. The woman turned out to be Sean Connery’s aunt, who was also at the reception. He was walking towards where Marvin was when producer Kenneth Hyman stopped him, saying: “Sean, just don’t hit him in the face, he has a close-up to shoot tomorrow.” Connery, after being explained what happened, simply burst out laughing and made some joke about all producers in general.
- Robert Aldrich ordered the actors to change their modern hairstyles to ones that would be appropriate for the time and place specified in the script. Marvin immediately got a haircut, while the others preferred to simply shorten the hairstyles they already had. Aldrich repeated twice to everyone that their appearance did not match the image, and finally ordered all the actors to either do as he said or bring their lawyers next time.
- Robert Aldrich was informed that he could be nominated for an Academy Award in the 'Best Director' category if he cut the scene with Jim Brown's character throwing grenades into a bomb shelter (where women and children were hiding, with no chance of surviving the grenade blasts). Aldrich refused to cut the scene in order to show the horrors of war.
- Work on the film dragged on for so long that Jim Brown began to worry he would miss training camp before the start of the 1965-1966 football season. Eventually, NFL management began threatening Brown with fines and suspension if he didn’t leave the set immediately and report to training camp. Brown called a press conference and announced his retirement from football, even though he was considered one of the best players at the time.
- One scene required Lee Marvin to drive a car with Charles Bronson’s character in the passenger seat. Everything was ready to shoot, except for Marvin. He was eventually found in a pub in central London, taken to the studio, and pumped full of coffee to sober up. When Marvin literally stumbled out of the car on set, Bronson exclaimed: “Goddamn it, Lee, I’ll just kill you!”
- Clint Walker was originally supposed to play a role in one scene, but seeing his negative attitude towards it, director Robert Aldrich ordered the script to be changed so that Donald Sutherland’s character would play the scene instead. It was Sutherland’s performance in that scene that got him cast in Robert Altman’s war drama *MASH*, which ultimately made him famous.
- Lee Marvin served as a consultant on military uniforms and weapons, striving to portray the war as realistically as possible in the film and complaining about the falseness of certain scenes (for example, when one character takes a bayonet from another). Director Robert Aldrich simply remarked in response that the entire script was ridiculous and absurd, and that by the time viewers left the cinema, they would be so stunned by the action scenes, explosions, and deaths that they wouldn’t think about the film's flaws.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
