PORK CHOP HILL 255
and I prob ably should take him to see this. If anyone wants to know what the war
is like, this would be a good one for them.” A third veteran, Bill Burton, a Marine
who fought in 1968–1969, said, “It was almost real. There were some things I saw
in the film that I did.” Asked what they were he said, “No, I’d rather not say. It
affects me to this day” (Siskel, 1987).
Pork Chop Hill (1959)
Synopsis
Pork Chop Hill is an American war film written by James R. Webb; produced by Sy
Bartlett; directed by Lewis Milestone; and starring Gregory Peck, Rip Torn, and
George Peppard. Based on the book by U.S. military historian Brigadier Gen-
eral S.L.A. Marshall, the film depicts the first Battle of Pork Chop Hill between the
U.S. Army’s 7th Infantry Division and Chinese and North Korean forces in
April 1953 in the final days of the Korean War.
Background
The so- called Battle of Pork Chop Hill actually comprises two related Korean War
battles fought during the spring and summer of 1953 in the midst of cease- fire
negotiations at Panmunjom that would end the war on 27 July— and make these
costly engagements militarily pointless. Military analyst and historian, U.S. Army
Brigadier General S.L.A. “Slam” Marshall depicted the first battle (16–18 April 1953)
in his 1956 bestseller, Pork Chop Hill: The American Fighting Man in Action Korea,
Spring 1953. Screenwriter James Webb brought Marshall’s book to the attention of
Gregory Peck, who agreed to turn it into an anti- war film that would show war
realistically, that is, in all its nerve- wracking carnage, waste, and futility. Peck pur-
chased the screen rights from S.L.A. Marshall for a pittance: a lopsided deal that
Marshall rued for the rest of his life. Peck then hired Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on
the Western Front) to direct the picture for Melville Productions, Peck’s new pro-
duction com pany, formed with his friend, screenwriter Sy Bartlett (Twelve O’Clock
High).
Production
A casting call yielded some 640 applicants for about 40 screen roles. Many of the
young actors who won parts in the film went on to have distinguished film and/or
TV careers (e.g., Rip Torn, Woody Strode, Harry Guardino, George Peppard, Nor-
man Fell, Robert Blake, Martin Landau, James Edwards, Gavin McLeod, Harry
Dean Stanton, Bert Remsen, and Clarence Williams III). Under the supervision of
production designer Nicolai Remisoff and set decorator Edward G. Boyle, crews
turned a 300- foot outcropping at Albertson Ranch, Thousand Oaks, California (10
miles north of Malibu), into a realistic facsimile of Pork Chop Hill, with trenches,
bunkers, and concertina wire. Track was laid down to accommodate a rolling cam-
era platform for tracking and following shots by cinematographer Sam Leavitt—
an arrangement similar to the one that Lewis Milestone had deployed in All Quiet