[Political Junkie Too]

Movi like this one, or The Longest Day, were about giving as many Hollywood stars cameo appearances as possible.

-PJ

[sphinx]

Movi like this one, or The Longest Day, were about giving as many Hollywood stars cameo appearances as possible.

I don't know whether it's actually true, but I've read that the reason for the scads of star cameo roles in such movies was to give audiences easy reference points for fixing different units and missions in very large and complex operations. Makes sense to me.

[daler]

It’s my understanding that Ike walked out of The Longest Day after just a few minutes, due to its inaccuracies.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Same for IS PARIS BURNING?

[Captain Peter Blood]

That is not totally accurate.

At the time “The Longest Day” was made 20th Century Fox was almost bankrupt because of the cost overruns making “Cleopatra” with Elizabeth Taylor.

Darryl F. Zanuck was living and producing movies in Europe at the time and had acquired the rights to Ryan's book “The Longest Day”. He came back when the studio was on the brink as he was the largest stockholder in the company.

He persuaded the board to back him making that movie and got the idea of having all those cameos to sell the picture worldwide. It was ,I think ,a well made film on D-Day and was was certainly the Box Office shot in the arm the studio needed, it literally saved the studio from bankruptcy.

Zanuck ended up having to put his own money into the film to finish it like he wanted.

I have a VHS copy of that film Colorized and it is pretty good, you can't find that anymore and it's not available on DVD like that either.

A great film.

[dfwgator]

Movi like this one, or The Longest Day, were about giving as many Hollywood stars cameo appearances as possible.

Yeah, but at least The Longest Day had this.....