The Longest Day

Released in 1962 by 20th Century Fox, 35mm black and white negative enlarged for 70mm CinemaScope print with 2.35:1 screen ratio, sound mix 4-track stereo, 180 mins.; Laserdisc released 1996; DVD released 1998 in letterbox.

Production:

• Directed by Ken Annakin (British exteriors), Andrew Marton (American exteriors), Gerd Oswald (parachute drop scene), Bernhard Wicki (German scenes), Darryl F. Zanuck
• Written by Romain Gary and James Jones and David Pursall, based on the book by Cornelius Ryan
• Produced by Darryl F. Zanuck
• Original music by Paul Anka (song), Maurice Jarre
• Music Arranged by Mitch Miller
• Cinematography by Jean Bourgoin, Pierre Levent, Henri Persin, Walter Wottitz
• Aerial photography by Elmo Williams
• Film Editing by Samuel E. Beetley
• Art Direction Leon Barsacq, Ted Haworth, Vincent Korda
• Sound by Jacques Maumont
• Special Effects Karl Baumgartner

Cast:

• Eddie Albert as Colonel Tom Newton
• Paul Anka as U.S. Ranger
• Arletty as Madame Barrault
• Jean-Louis Barrault as Father Roulland
• Richard Beymer as Private Dutch Schultz
• Hans Christian Blech as Major Pluskat
• Bourvil as Mayor of Colleville
• Richard Burton as Flight Officer David Campbell
• Wolfgang Buttner as Major General Doctor Hans Speidel
• Red Buttons as Pvt. John Steele Pauline Carton
• Sean Connery as Private Flanagan
• Ray Danton as Captain Frank
• Irina Demick as Janine Boitard
• Fred Durr as Major of the Rangers
• Fabian as U.S. Ranger
• Mel Ferrer as Maj. Gen. Robert Haines
• Henry Fonda as Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt Jr.
• Steve Forrest as Captain Harding
• Gert Frobe as Sgt. Kaffeklatsch
• Leo Genn as Brigadier General Parker
• John Gregson as British Padre
• Paul Hartmann as Field-Marshal Gerd Von Rundstedt
• Peter Helm as Young G.I
• Werner Hinz as Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
• Donald Houston as R.A.F. Pilot
• Jeffrey Hunter as Sgt. (later Lt.) John H. Fuller
• Curt Jurgens as Major General Gunther Blumentritt
• Alexander Knox as Major General Walter Bedell Smith
• Peter Lawford as Lord Lovat
• Fernand Ledoux as Louis
• Christian Marquand as Commander Philippe Kieffer
• Dewey Martin as Private Wilder
• Roddy McDowall as Private Morris
• Michael Medwin as Pvt. Watney
• Sal Mineo as Private Martini
• Robert Mitchum as Brig. Gen. Norman Cota
• Kenneth More as Captain Colin Maud
• Richard Munch as General Erich Marcks
• Edmond O'Brien as Gen. Raymond D. Barton
• Leslie Phillips as R.A.F. officer
• Wolfgang Preiss as Major General Max Pemsel
• Ron Randell as Joe Williams
• Madeleine Renaud as Mother Superior
• Georges Rivière as Sergeant Guy de Montlaur
• Norman Rossington as Pvt. Clough
• Robert Ryan as Brig. Gen. James Gavin
• Tommy Sands as U.S. Ranger
• George Segal as 1st commando up cliff
• Jean Servais as Rear Admiral Janjard
• Rod Steiger as Destroyer Commander
• Richard Todd as Major John Howard
• Tom Tryon as Lieutenant Wilson
• Peter Van Eyck as Lieutenant Colonel Ocker
• Robert Wagner as U.S. Army Ranger
• Richard Wattis as British soldier
• Stuart Whitman as Lieutenant Sheen
• Georges Wilson as Alexandre Renaud
• John Wayne as Lt. Col. Benjamin Vandervoort

Links:

• Cornelius Ryan
• Longest Day film title from IMDb
• Credits from the IMDB for the title The Longest Day
• Longest Day film from Sean Connery Page
• Stephen Ambrose compared Longest Day with Saving Private Ryan in Dallas Morning News story:. . ."I knew it was about D-Day and I knew they used my book to get incidents and scenes and happenings. Like everybody else, my idea of a war movie was Darryl F. Zanuck's The Longest Day. This is not The Longest Day." Mr. Ambrose says he'd watched that 1962 epic many times, with a star-studded cast that included Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda and Mr. Zanuck's girlfriend at the time, Irinia Demich, as a Resistance member. But, Mr. Ambrose says, he saw The Longest Day with new eyes after Saving Private Ryan. "Things just leaped out at me that I hadn't thought about before. For example, there's almost no battle noise in The Longest Day. What little there is fades out for the dialogue. You don't want to miss a word of what John Wayne's got to say. In Private Ryan, you have to lean forward to hear what they're saying - and you lose a lot of it." Also, he says, when a soldier got shot in The Longest Day, he was dead. "The CO writes home to the widow or the mother that he never knew what hit him. He didn't suffer. Well, it didn't happen like that. Only in 1 percent of the cases did you get shot between the eyes or directly in the heart." Most of the time, he says, soldiers under fire knew what hit them. "They knew their guts were coming out of their stomach and they were trying to stuff them back in. They cried out for mother, water, cigarettes and morphine. You don't ever see that in Zanuck." Another sight never seen in Longest Day is GIs shooting Germans coming out of dugouts with their hands up. "That happened a lot. It's hard to imagine American kids doing that until you talk to them and ask how they could have done it." But the veterans he interviewed for his books didn't mince words. "They said, 'Listen, that (expletive) was firing until he ran out of ammunition and he hit my buddy. Now he's out of ammunition and he throws his rifle down and comes out and wants to be my comrade. Screw that!' You see that in Spielberg's movie." Some of the difference between the two films is due to their timing, he says. "Before Vietnam, Spielberg could not have made Private Ryan. The public wouldn't have accepted it, wouldn't have allowed it. Being after instead of before Vietnam gave him a lot of room that Zanuck didn't have." . . .
• Wrap Shot from Cinematographer magazine, August 1998: "The driving force behind the blockbuster project was legendary producer Daryl F. Zanuck, who brought in three directors (Andrew Marton, Ken Annakin and Bernhard Wicki) and four crack French cinematographers (Henri Persin, Walter Wottitz, Pierre Levent and Jean Bourgoin) to tackle various segments of the production. (Although uncredited, Zanuck himself helmed some scenes shot in the U.S.) This team effort surely helped to lend each of the picture's primary venues (including gritty beachheads, opulent German headquarters, and war-torn French villages) their own distinct photographic style. Filmed at 31 separate locations, much of the film's action was staged on actual D-Day battlefields, including the beaches of Normandy and the seaside town of Ste. Mère Eglise. (It's reported that the production was so authentic that emotionally scarred locals threw stones at the unfortunate actors dressed in German uniforms.) More filming was done in Corsica, while stage work was completed at the Studio Boulogne in Paris. An army of extras was led into battle by a stellar array of Hollywood heroes, including John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Richard Burton, Robert Ryan and Eddie Albert. Interestingly, some of the supporting players were real-life veterans of the Normandy invasion, including Lt. Richard Todd (who participated in the British 6th Airborne's glider assault on the Orne River Bridge) and Pvt. Joseph Lowe (who landed on Omaha Beach with the 5th Ranger Battalion and heroically scaled the treacherous hundred-foot cliffs at Pointe du Hoc)."

[image below fromWrap Shot]

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