“The Dirty Dozen,” first released in 1967, stands as an enduring – if still controversial – game-changing WWII movie.
In a starry movie year that included “Bonnie and Clyde,” “The Graduate,” “In the Heat of the Night,” “Cool Hand Luke” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” it ranked as the Number One film at the box-office.
Dwayne Epstein’s “Killin’ Generals: The Making of The Dirty Dozen” (Citadel Press, $28) takes its title from the last line in Robert Aldrich’s now-classic film and considers its roots in a bestselling 1965 book, the ensemble cast led by Oscar-winner Lee Marvin and its legacy.
Was it based on an actual assignment – or not? No one really knows whether a group of American soldiers imprisoned in the UK, some slated for execution, were given a suicide mission: To parachute behind enemy lines in France just prior to D-Day. Any who survived would be pardoned.
Beyond Marvin, the diverse dozen included Charles Bronson, Ernest Borgnine, TV’s hulking Clint Walker, pro footballer Jim Brown, singer Trini Lopez, John Cassavetes (“Rosemary’s Baby”) and Telly Savalas (“Kojak”).
Shot entirely in England, ‘Dirty Dozen” looked like a disaster when it went five months beyond its four-month schedule with a budget that doubled from $4 to $8 million. Part of the problem was the uncooperative British weather, Epstein said in a phone interview. “The other thing was the big French chateau that’s to be blown-up at the climax. Initially, it was built so well with concrete it would have taken seven tons of dynamite to blow it up. So they had to tear out the façade and rebuild it.”
Epstein’s behind the scenes book makes clear they were hardly a happy ensemble: Lee Marvin was a raging alcoholic with PTSD following his war service. Bronson, grumpy and surly.
“The director Robert Aldrich famously said, ‘Lee Marvin is a great actor to work with and a great guy. But he drinks.’ And he did do that,” Epstein recounted. “They hired Bob Phillips, an actor in the movie who was a friend of Lee’s, to be his babysitter. It was his job to make sure Marvin showed up to the set on time and sober.
“The problem was, towards the end of the film Bob Phillips’ role was finished. By the time they got to the big finale Marvin was completely plastered.”
Epstein believes Bronson wasn’t always King Crab – he was just perpetually upset that his future (second) wife “Jill Ireland was not nearby in her native England but in Hollywood shooting a television show. He was in a bad mood most of the time.”
