If you had to choose a handful of military films to show a young audience what the past was like, The Dirty Dozen, would have to be on the list. It's one of those movies that made it to the Christmas time rerun lineups on that thing we used to watch all day, the TV. A lot of actors were WWII veterans back in the day. It's not that common today. Adam Driver is the only modern actor that comes to mind thinking of veterans in Hollywood. I did a Google search and saw a bunch of old actors and a few I've never heard of and of course, Kylo Ren. I think it's just because EVERYONE joined the military back in WWII so being a veteran was way more common. Two of the main stars in The Dirty Dozen were awarded The Purple Heart in WWII and one was a huge football star. They carry themselves differently from the other actors and bring some old school alpha male legitimacy to the film.
Do you want to meet the hangman or go on a suicide mission and regain your honor and maybe your freedom? Everyone in The Dirty Dozen is hated by the army, but given that choice. Even the Major is on the army's bad side. He doesn't respect his superiors and back talks to Generals. The rest of the men are prisoners on death row and are chosen by the Major to complete Airborne training then jump behind enemy lines.
The classic prison or military scene where the old man defeats the biggest dude and shows why he's the alpha may have it's origins in The Dirty Dozen. I can't think of a film that did this before. Can you?
This film was based on a book which was very loosely based on real WWII paratroopers, but the story started to jump off the railroad of reality since the beginning. This dramatized “article” from WWII, reminds us that fake news ain’t new. ..
The paratroopers were full-blood Indians who wouldn’t bathe, had mohawks, wore war paint, and would only listen to their commander after he beat them in a fist fight.
Arc Whitehouse - True Magazine
Newspapers, books, and Hollywood have always bent reality to benefit the story. The real guys who all of this were based on really were dirty because they saved their bathing water to cook what they hunted and they were a bunch of badass dudes who would get drunk, get in fistfights, and likely spent a few nights in military jail. They had to be super brave to jump out of planes with crappy parachutes into enemy territory and probably didn't fit in with the normal army guys, but they weren't murderers or rapists or prisoners like in the film. Soldiers may have worn the enemy's cap for fun, but never did they straight up dress up like Nazi's and sneak into Germany like they do in this and other films.
Jim Brown retired from the NFL while filming The Dirty Dozen. He was missing practice and was being fined every day he missed and was also going to lose his pay so he threw in the towel and chose acting over football. I was going to put his letter to his coach here, but it wasn't exactly poetry or interesting. He basically says, "I'm an actor now and your team will be fine, later buddy."
When I was in the army I was in a Thai language course with this Special Forces Major I really looked up to. I was a 19 year old Private, so a 35 year old Major was like a father figure or uncle to me. I remember how funny he thought the scene where one of the men pretend to be a General, inspect some soldiers and asks one of them where they come from was. After the soldier answers with some small town he replies, "Never heard of it."
If you've never seen this film, I recommend that you watch it. It's funny and has a lot of themes you'll recognize in more modern films. It was filmed only 21 years after the war so it has historic authenticity alongside the Hollywood fluffery and goofiness.
Resources
Images:
I took screenshots of the film, emailed them to my iPad, fixed the distortions in Procreate, and adjusted the light settings in the iOS Photos app.
Wikipedia:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dirty_Dozen
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filthy_Thirteen
