Behind the Scenes of The Red Badge of Courage (1951)

Sydney Pollack introducing the 1951 movie "The Red Badge of Courage" starring Audie Murphy for Turner Classic Movies .

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The making of the movie…• Director John Huston used unusual compositions and camera angles

drawn from film noir to create a battlefield environment that is foreboding and alienating.

• Huston believed his film could have been "his best," but as he tells Lillian Ross: "They don't want me to make this picture. And I want to make this picture."

• How the film was made is the subject of Ross's 1952 book Picture, a masterpiece of journalism, originally in The New Yorker magazine as a 5-part series.

• MGM cut the film's length to 69 minutes and added narration following supposedly poor audience test screenings.

• View the made-for-TV movie version from 1974, starring Richard Thomas (of The Waltons fame). Note the differences in production techniques from the earlier (1951) movie.

The leading actors were chosen for the 1951 film as much for their off-screen fame as for their acting skills. For example, the character of Henry

Fielding, “the Youth,” was played by World War II hero, Audie Murphy.

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…as Tom Wilson, the “Loud Soldier”

Bill Mauldin was a sergeant for the 45th Division's press corps and for the Army’s “Stars and Stripes” newspaper during World War II . His acting career was not his “day job” after the War; he was a Pulitzer-prize winning cartoonist for St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

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The cartoon character “Willie” (left) and his G.I. buddy “Joe” were Maudin’s Pulitzer-prize winning creations.

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Narrated by James Whitmore.

The studio decided to add voice-over narration to clarify plot events for

the viewer, a strategy Huston opposed.

Perennial Hollywood tug-of-war:Art vs. Commerce

"The only picture I ever made that seems as though it's

going to be marked down simply as a box-office failure is

The Red Badge of Courage," Huston told the film's

producer, “and I thought that was the best picture I ever

made." http://journalism.nyu.edu/publishing/archives/portfolio/books/book59.html

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