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Site created 12/15/97.
page created: 7/23/08
 Back to A Bridge Too Far... NOTE: The scans below are the property of Robert Siegel and The Digital Bits, and may not be reposted without permission. Copyright of the images belongs to the respective studios. In addition, please note that all the information contained within the text is taken from ORIGINAL studio press materials, which may contain some errors. |
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The Longest Day
Film appreciation by Robert Siegel of The Digital Bits 20th Century Fox was in deep trouble. The costs on its 1963 production of its epic Cleopatra had skyrocketed to over $44 million dollars and would only return $26 million in USA film grosses. This put Fox in a dangerous situation. During this time, Daryl Zanuck was over-seas working on his long-sought dream: a film version of The Longest Day, which has been remastered and released by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment for blu-ray disc. The board of 20th Century Fox wanted to release Zanuck's masterpiece in a wide release, avoiding the roadshow tradition of Fox's bigger pictures. This simply could not be. This is when Zanuck flew back to New York and took back hold of his studio, appointed his son Richard to head of production, and The Longest Day did indeed play as the roadshow Zanuck had intended. During this time, the Fox studios became desolate and the only people left on the lot, due to the disaster of production costs of Cleopatra, were a small amount of employees on a small section of the lot, while most of the lot was simply shut down. This film, along with a movie whose script had been sitting on the shelf gathering dust called The Sound of Music, would turn the Fox studio around and save it. [Continued below...] |
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The Longest Day is a $10 million filmed production of Cornelius Ryan's best-selling account based on interviews with over 3,000 D-Day participants from both sides. Because there were no cameras to record the actual invasion and the thousands of human incidents of that historic day, Zanuck assembled 42 international stars for the most important of the 167 speaking parts and thousands of combat troops to re-stage on actual combat sites a panoramic look at the events as seen through the eyes of the men that were there. Heightening the historic and dramatic values of the film is the fascinating insight into the seemingly incredible German errors. German intelligence had broken the Allied code and actually knew the hours, if not the places where the attack would occur. But the German high commander refused to act. Hitler slept until the early afternoon on D-Day and Field Marshall von Runstedt was unable to get the vaunted Panzer reserves to the front line in time. [Continued below...] |
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Months of painstaking preparation preceded the two years required for actual production of The Longest Day. As Zanuck himself put it, "General Eisenhower had his men and material, I had to find mine for the film." Outstanding cooperation by the American, British, French and German governments aided Zanuck in his efforts to gather the fleets of ships, planes, tanks and trucks and the thousands of combat troops to support his all-star cast. Special permission was obtained to restore German bunkers and trenches, shell-torn terrain and battered buildings-many scars long since healed by time-along the Normandy coast. Entire villages were evacuated for weeks at a time while battles were re-staged and the Normandy skies lit up at night as glider and paratroop landings were re-created at their original sights in the deadly glare of "enemy" fire. Zanuck was quoted as saying, "The biggest problem we had to face, once we had our men, was rounding up the ordnance materials. Fortunately, the various governments cooperated magnificently and, even though much of the 1944 equipment is outdated today, we were able to get thousands of guns, boats, tanks, trucks and uniforms that we needed." [Continued below...] |
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Zanuck's insistence on using the actual locales for the various incidents that make The Longest Day such a vivid recounting of D-Day created another problem. Time had healed only some or Normandy's wounds. "For instance," recalled Zanuck, "at Pointe du Hoc we found that the shell-torn area above the cliffs along with the German bunkers and trenches had been completely overgrown. We received permission from the French army to use flame-throwers to clear the area and restore it to its original look. We did everything humanly possible to make the film authentic in every respect. We could have saved a lot of money if we could have used newsreel shots, but very little footage existed that was actually shot on the beaches at D-Day, we re-created every scene. We wanted to make a picture concerned with the human side of the invasion." Zanuck refused to be deterred by the obvious fact that bringing the film to the screen would be a back-breaking effort. After months of preparation, the production was launched on 31 locations along the Normandy coast. Two production units - and sometimes three - were always working simultaneously, and Zanuck, working 16 to 18 hours a day, flew by helicopter from one location to another to supervise every aspect of the filming. At night, after others had fallen exhausted in bed, the tireless Zanuck dictated to his secretaries. This display was typical of Zanuck, who chewed on his cigar and kept on going tirelessly, winning the admiration of all that worked with him. [Continued below...] |
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Zanuck was born in Wahoo, Nebraska. His father was running the Grand Hotel there, but by the time he was six, his dreams of adventure convinced him that nothing ever happened at the hotel or for that matter in the town. When his parents took him to California, the six-year-old got a job for fifty cents a day at one of the studios, but his father found out and shipped the movie-struck boy back to Nebraska. Zanuck, pretending he was 18, enlisted at the start of World War I and served overseas with the 37th division. Wounded, he was sent home and in New York attempted to launch a magazine writing career. Editor's rejection slips sent him back to his family in California. Undaunted by set-backs and still in his teens, he worked as a long-shoreman on the San Pedro waterfront and tried his hand in the ring only to be knocked out with the first punch. He accumulated enough money to start writing again and soon sold an original story to the Fox Film Company for $500. Warner Brothers heard of his facility in grinding out plots and hired him to write for their dog star, Rin Tin Tin for $150 a week. Two years later he left Warners and started his own company in association with Joseph M. Schenck. When Twentieth Century Pictures was subsequently merged with Fox, Darryl Zanuck, at the age of 33, assumed complete charge of all production. Zanuck was the first to receive the Irving Thalberg award for making the greatest contribution to the screen in 1937 and received the award again in 1944 and 1950. [Continued below...] |
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 Publicity shots taken by Fox of Henry Fonda, Richard Burton, John Wayne, Irina Demich, Robert Mitchum and Daryl Zanuck on the set. |
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Props were another problem in filming such a large-scale production. Sam Gordon was not known to movie fans but he was propmaster for 17 war films. It was his job to collect the vast amount of arms that were needed for the picture. He found most of them in military depots in Europe and the United States. Luckily, Gordon was a man who knows how to find things that are needed for production. Take the British Pian gun, for instance, which the Tommies used during the invasion and which was a counterpart of the American bazooka. The Piat did not exist anymore, but after a long search, he was able to loan them courtesy of the British War museum. Portraying key figures in the 20th Century Fox release were John Wayne, Richard Burton, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Stuart Whitman, Rod Steiger, Curt Jurgens, Mel Ferrer, Robert Wagner, Fabian, Richard Todd, Peter Lawford, Robert Tyan and Roddy McDowall, as combination of stars that just aren't seen in pictures anymore. Irina Demich, a pretty French model, made her screen debut as well. She plays the role of Janine Boitard, a courageous member of the French resistance modeled after the real Madame Leonard Gille, who saved 68 Allied flyers during the war. She has the only featured female role in the picture, which only had six female parts. "I needed a fresh new face, " said Zanuck in a later interview. "I didn't want someone who was known well. I feel that Irina brought an original quality to the role." Darryl Zanuck had definite reasons for not filming the movie in color and not having a musical score. "Before starting the picture I made tests in color and the ocean looked too blu and the blood too red," Zanuck exclaimed. "Besides, I have an aversion to seeing GI's in steel helmets with make-up on their faces. So I finally made the decision to film the action in monochrome and I think the results justified the decision. For the most part I was content to let the sounds of war and the voices of the men be the music, so I made another decision to avoid a musical score. At the same time I had Paul Anka write a rousing theme song which I used under certain sequences in the picture." The film was made during the same era as Fox produced many other widescreen war films including D-Day the 6th of June, Patton, Tora! Tora! Tora!, The Sand Pebbles and The Blue Max. The film is an important part of the history of both Zanuck and 20th Century Fox during a period when the studio was close to bankruptcy and is an epic production that can finally be seen in all it's glory in high definition on Blu-ray Disc. |
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