The Devil's Brigade (film)

The producer David L. Wolper was a noted documentary filmmaker interested in getting into feature films. He purchased the film rights to Adleman and Walton's book in October 1965. (He had already bought the rights to the book The Remagen Bridge.)[3]

Wolper said he was attracted to the material because he did not want to be typed as a serious documentary filmmaker. "It's based on truth but it's a 'movie movie' a fun and games type thing," he said.[4]

United Artists agreed to finance.[5] Wolper hired William Roberts to do a script.[6] The producer later wrote in his memoirs that "this was my first feature but I was not in the slightest bit intimidated."[7]

In October 1966 William Holden agreed to star.[8] The following month Andrew McLaglen agreed to direct.[9]

Filming started 15 April 1967. The motion picture was filmed with the 19th Special Forces Group at Camp Williams, Utah, 20 miles south of Salt Lake City, with battle locations on Mount Jordan near Draper, Utah, and on location in Sant'Elia Fiumerapido, Italy.[10]

Parts of the film were also shot in Park City, Lehi, Alpine, Solitude and Granite Mountain in Utah.[11]

David L. Wolper realized it would be as cheap to shoot in an Italian village as building an Italian set in America.[12] However, the birthday scene which is set in Italy was filmed at the National Guard Armory in Salt Lake City, with Brigham Young University students as extras.

The U.S. Department of Defense provided 300 members of the Utah National Guard to play soldiers in the mass battle scenes filmed. Wolper had the Brigade wear attractive but fictional red berets that appeared as well as on the film's posters and on the tie-in paperback cover of Adelman and Walton's book.

The cast of The Devil's Brigade included NFL running back Paul Hornung and World Middleweight Champion boxer Gene Fullmer in minor roles. They can be seen in the barroom brawl sequence, Hornung as a belligerent lumberjack and Fullmer as the bartender.

Wolper later wrote that Holden was very co operative during the shoot in Utah, only drinking wine, but in Italy his drinking got out of control. Wolper had to call on the assistance of a woman in Paris who had dealt with Holden before and helped him finish the film on schedule.[13]

McLaglen said when he showed the finished cut to United Artists they "loved" the film.

But the producer had a big projection room in his house, and he showed the movie for a solid week to a hundred people, and I think a hundred people had ideas of what we should do with the movie... And without me having any input – I didn’t have the last say – they cut the movie and, in the end, it was not nearly as good as it could have been. I had a great ending, and a lot of good stuff in there, and he didn’t know what he was doing. I still worry about that.[14]

The film was the fourth most popular movie in general release in Britain in 1968, after The Jungle Book, Barbarella and Carry on Doctor.[15]

Wolper later wrote "The Devil's Brigade turned out to be a terrific film. It was a wonderful story, the acting was excellent, and the preview audiences and critics loved it. Unfortunately it came out just a few months after the release of The Dirty Dozen, which was the same kind of story. It was a big hit and it killed us. We got lost in the wind."[16]

To the veterans of the Force, the film was historically inaccurate. In a TV documentary Suicide Missions: The Black Devils, Force member Bill Story stated: "The Devil's Brigade was and is a very entertaining war movie. But as a piece of accurate history it's sheer nonsense. There was never an aspect of The Dirty Dozen. This was absolutely not true."