Trivia / The Green Berets

• Backed by the Pentagon: After John Wayne bought out Robin Moore, the original author's, share in the production. The Pentagon was trying to prosecute him for revealing classified information.
• California Doubling: Fort Benning, Georgia, stands in for both Vietnam and Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Those soldiers exercising on the field when Kirby calls out to them were real soldiers going through Airborne School (located in Benning) at the time.
• Cast the Expert: The colonel who ran the jump school (and who was seen shooting trap with Col. Kirby) was Col. Welch, the real-life jump school commandant and a legendary commander of U.S. paratroopers.
• Channel Hop: Originally Universal Pictures was to produce the film in early 1967. However Universal pulled out due to concerns about the film, so instead it was made by Warner Bros..
• Creator Backlash: George Takei has admitted in interviews that while he was grateful to be cast in this film, he nevertheless strongly disagreed with the film's pro-war message and felt the finished movie was very bad.
• Dawson Casting: Most colonels were only in their 30s during The Vietnam War. John Wayne, playing a colonel, was 60 when this film was made and Bruce Cabot, also playing a colonel, was 63.
• Deleted Role: Scenes were filmed with Vera Miles as Col. Kirby's wife but they were cut before release by the studio. The scene only took one morning to shoot, but the film was considered overlong, and that scene was judged easiest to cut. Batjac, John Wayne's company, offered her $10,000 for her work. When she refused that, they then offered her a new car, which she also declined to accept. Wayne made up for this by casting Miles in his next film Hellfighters.
• Doing It for the Art: John Wayne helped to personally bankroll the movie and turned down the role of Major Reisman in The Dirty Dozen in order to co-direct and star in it. He claimed that his goal was not to make a political film, but a tribute to the courage of the American soldier and Special Forces specifically.
• Executive Meddling:
  • The Pentagon requested edits to the script so that it showed the South Vietnamese as a bigger part of the war effort, and changed the abduction of the North Vietnamese general, which originally featured a cross-border raid into North Vietnam^note Such raids were, of course, happening all the time but they were highly classified..
  • John Wayne wished the screenplay to have more development of the characters, but Warner Bros. made it clear they wanted more action and less talk, as The Alamo (1960) was heavily criticized for having too much dialogue.
• Fake Nationality: The Vietnamese characters were played by Japanese actors.
• He Also Did: Ray Kellogg, who co-directed with Wayne, previously directed Mystery Science Theater 3000 fodder The Killer Shrews and The Giant Gila Monster. Since the film was a very blatant star vehicle and Author Tract for Wayne, he's often assumed to be its sole director and Kellogg's name is forgotten. Asked by a biographer what Kellogg contributed to the film, Wayne only commented that "without him, my career would not be what it is today."^note There are two main rumors as to Kellogg's exact role — the first is that he was originally only the second unit director, and made such a big contribution that Wayne had him credited as co-director on the finished product. The second is that the studio made Wayne hire Kellogg as co-director from the get-go, as they were keen to avoid a repeat of the cost and filming overruns that marked Wayne's directorial debut, The Alamo (1960).
• Hostility on the Set:
  • John Wayne and Aldo Ray did not get along during filming. Ray later spoke disparagingly of Wayne in interviews.
  • David Janssen had a severe argument with Wayne on the set of the production because Wayne lost his temper on a young Asian actor during the shooting. Janssen left the set, which he never did before in his career.
• Referenced by...: Gets a mention in Dispatches, a memoir by the reporter Michael Herr:
  In any other war, they would have made movies about us too, Dateline: Hell!, Dispatch from Dong Ha, maybe even A Scrambler to the Front, about Tim Page, Sean Flynn and Rick Merron, three young photographers who used to ride in and out of combat on Hondas. But Vietnam is awkward, everyone knows how awkward, and if people don't even want to hear about it, you know they're not going to want to sit in the dark and have it brought up. (The Green Berets doesn't count. That wasn't really about Vietnam, it was about Santa Monica).
• Uncredited Role: Mervyn Le Roy said in his biography that he was asked by the producers to come and assist John Wayne on the film. Le Roy accepted on the condition Wayne asks himself. Wayne did and Le Roy came and helped him directing, but refused to have his name in the credits.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Bruce Dern was originally cast as Sergeant Provoiin.
  • John Wayne wanted his friend Elmer Bernstein to score the film but Bernstein felt compelled to turn the opportunity down, as he didn't feel it sat well with his politics.

---