BIG RED ONE, THE 31
awarded the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, and the Purple Heart. After the war Sam
Fuller became a pulp fiction writer and then a filmmaker specializing in B- movies,
but making a film based on his own war experiences was never far from his mind.
By 1958 he had a “Big Red One” script completed. John Wayne got wind of the
proj ect and asked Fuller if he could star in the movie, but Oscar Dystel, head of
Bantam Books, encouraged Fuller to write a book instead of doing a movie. In the
end Fuller did neither because he could not formulate a coherent narrative (Peary,
2012, p. 79). In 1974 director- producer Peter Bogdanovich, a close friend of Fuller’s
who had been hearing his war stories for years, offered to produce Fuller’s “Big
Red One” film and persuaded Paramount studio head Frank Yablans to option the
property. Yablans paid Fuller $5,000 to write a new script. By the time Fuller had
it completed, Yablans had left Paramount and been replaced by Robert Evans, who
let the option lapse. Ultimately Lorimar, a new mini- studio specializing in TV pro-
duction, took over the proj ect but repeatedly scaled down its projected bud get,
from $12 million to just $4 million, precluding some planned location shooting in
Tunisia and Yugo slavia (now Slovenia). Gene Corman, Roger Corman’s brother,
replaced Bogdanovich as producer. As was always Fuller’s intention, U.S. Marine
Corps WWII veteran Lee Marvin was hired to play the iconic lead role of the ser-
geant. The only other big name was Mark Hamill (Star Wars), who played Pvt. Griff.
Robert Carradine (who also appeared in Star Wars) played Zab, a cigar- chomping
private representing a WWII- era Fuller.
Production
Principal photography took place in the spring and summer months of 1978. Direct-
ing battle scenes with a loaded .45 pistol in his hand, Fuller would fire into the air
after a take to remind his actors of the mortal gravity of combat. Castle scenes were
filmed in Ireland and winter forest scenes were shot in California’s Sierra Madre
Mountains, but most of the film was shot at vari ous locations in Israel, with Nazi
soldiers played by Jewish extras (paid $11 per day), wearing yarmulkes under their
helmets. A quarry at Rosh Ha’ayin near Tel Aviv doubled for the Kasserine Pass in
Tunisia; a Roman amphitheater at Beit She’an near the Israel- Jordan border stood
in for the El Djem Coliseum in Tunisia; North African and Eu ro pean beach inva-
sion scenes were shot on beaches at Caesarea and Netanya, midway between Haifa
and Tel Aviv; Sicilian village scenes were shot in Haifa; and an abandoned armory
at Schneller Army Base in Jerusalem stood in for Falkenau concentration camp, its
swastikas hidden from the religious school opposite. The shoot went well, but post-
production proved exceedingly rocky. Fuller eventually assembled a four- and- a-
half- hour rough cut, but Lorimar executives rejected it as not “epic” enough in
content to warrant its lengthy running time. They took the editing away from Fuller
and hired journeyman editor Morton Tubor to cut the film down to 113 minutes,
leaving 60 percent of Fuller’s rough cut on the cutting room floor. They also hired
composer Bodie Chandler (Futureworld) to write a score without consulting Fuller:
another indignity that Fuller had to accept because his contract did not grant him
final cut.