i must've done a great job hunt? everybody good? we will call it a day. we will pick this up again. >> while the u.s. house is on break this week, we are showing american history tv programs normally seen only on the weekends here on c-span3. coming up, look at the movies -- movie saving private ryan which came out 20 years ago. it centered around world war ii landings at normandy. it 15 academy awards. how accurate was it? we will take you to a symposium to discuss that starting with a look at how d-day has been portrayed in other movies. that historians on the accuracy of saving private ryan. that is followed by the military advisor who helped make the

movie realistic. later, how the national wwii museum is connected to the movie saving private ryan. american history tv in primetime looks at the shenandoah valley battlefield conference on the history and future of confederate heritage icon. such as monuments and the battle flag. speakers include author and civil war historian james robertson, and american civil roll museum ceo kristi coleman. american history tv in primetime, friday at 8 pm eastern here on c-span3. this sunday on oral history, we continue our series on women in congress. with former democratic congresswoman pat schroeder, -- >> i was in this idealistic mode when i was first selected. how long do you think it will be before half of the houses female. so i asked the library of congress what they thought and they said probably 300 years. [ laughter ] it is very

incremental. very incremental. >> in the weeks ahead we will hear from vera clayton, helen bentley, barbara cannell he can nancy johnson, and lynn woolsey. watch oral history, sunday at 10 am eastern. on american history tv. on c-span3. in 1998, the academy award- winning world war ii film "saving private ryan" was released in theaters. it portrayed the d-day invasion of normandy and the mission to find a soldier behind enemy lines. american history tv, at a national world war ii museum symposium to mark the 20th anniversary of the film's release, historians explore and contrast other d-day films and talk about the director's process of creating them. this runs an hour and 40 minutes.

we are here today because 20 years ago an amazing film about the second world war came to the screen. i think all of us can agree this has to be one of the top world war ii movies ever made. fascinating, compelling, powerful, realistic, riveting. an amazing film. here we are one day after the 74th anniversary of d-day to talk about that wonderful film, "saving private ryan" that really captured the horrible events, the necessary and horrible events on the beaches of normandy on june 6, 1944. the film changed the way the nation looked at the war movie. we began to rethink the way we thought about our world war ii veterans. they began to rethink the way we thought about ourselves as a nation, and we certainly as citizens thought about the cost of war in a more powerful way as a result of this film. we will approach the film in four really exciting sessions, all addressing the film in

different ways. the first panel will be from two wonderful film historians, dr. marsha gordon and dr. nick cull of the university of southern california, both good friends of the museum. we are glad to have them here today. the next will be dr. kevin ferrell, retired u.s. army colonel, and dr. rob satina. we will see captain dale dye who served as the military advisor on the film, and the cleanup hitter is our founding president and ceo emeritus, dr. nick mueller. they will talk about with the film and the country, the overall lasting legacy still being felt today. i encourage you to keep your eyes open for another thing that will be coming out in the

next year, which nick is hard at work on -- a great book about the d-day landings from the perspective of our oral history collection. it is a gangbusters book. i have seen some early chapters and it's really powerful. in addition to this, we know that the audience will continue to be a great part of this conversation. you will drive discussions with your great questions and comments. onto the programs now. i don't want to drone on addressing these people. all the speakers have amazing resumes and we can waste half the day talking about their accomplishments. i would encourage you to look at your programs you received if you're interested in the full biographies. again, they are here throughout the day. engage our speakers. they are looking forward to talking to you. our first speaker, dr. marsha gordon from north carolina state is the author of "film is like a battleground, sam fuller's war movies." she will be followed by dr.

nick cull, the director of the master public diplomacy program as well as president of the international association of media and history, a good friend and partner organization of our own institute. first to present, please welcome marsha gordon. [ applause ] >> ok, good morning everybody. thank you so much for having me here today. it is truly an honor. i have been asked to speak about sam fuller and about his war films, and especially about the big red one, which has a d- day scene that is pertinent to today's discussion. i published this book last year that is on the screen. i will talk a little bit about

that in the course of my discussion today. it is focused on all of his hot and cold war films that he made over the course of his career. as a hollywood historian, i have been working on this project for a long time. it is wonderful to see it out. i will draw from a couple of things i want to mention. how many have seen a sam fuller film before? he published that his widow published posthumously his memoir called "a third face." it is wonderful if you're a fan. i would encourage you to read it. his daughter is a filmmaker and she did a documentary called "a fuller life" that is extraordinary. she is working on a documentary called "organized insanity," the phrase he used to describe war. look for that.

a very quick overview. fuller grew up in new york city in the 1920's. he worked as a newspaper copy boy and journalist in the 1930's. then he started selling novels and screenplays in hollywood in the late 1930's. he moved to los angeles and worked as a screenwriter. when world war ii broke out, he enlisted and served in the first infantry division, the big red one, for nearly three years during the war. after the war, he returned to hollywood and he started directing his own films in the late 1940's. this is just a partial filmography, starting with his first film but the films in the second half of the list are the ones that i discussed in the book. the three in red are related to world war ii in some way. i also will be showing you some images that are from his personal collection.

christa and samantha, his widow and daughter have all of his papers and photographs and letters and were journals in their possession. they were kind enough to give me full access to that. that image at the top is from a barbara stanwyck western gothic "40 guns," the big red one, steel helmet and fixed bayonets. he always inserted a reference to the first, even if the film had nothing to do with the war. the film frame below is from one of my favorite films, "a pickup on south street." you see the soldier standing between them. the war is the thing that defined his life and what he cared about most and was thinking about over the course of his career. a few things more about his military service. he was inducted in the army as a private on august 20, 1942 in los angeles. after basic training he was

deployed to north africa with k company, 26 infantry and he chose to work with a rifleman. he identified with the 16th. he joined by order of none other than colonel george taylor. he wanted a rifleman report for the history books. this came out after the war. you can see corporal sammy fuller gets a byline. i'm pointing to that screen. fuller contributed heavily to this history of the 16th. he participated in the battles or campaigns for central europe, normandy, northern france, the rhineland, sicily and tunisia. this is a letter from major

john lawton praising fuller's gallantry in action during d- day. this is from the personal collection that is framed and all the while inthe fuller household, which is why it is not a very good image because i could just take a photograph of it. he was wounded in action at normandy on june 8, two days after the landing in germany on september 14, 1944, after a post v-e trip to france. he returned on september 28, 1945. during the nearly three years of combat and frontline observation, fuller kept wartime diaries filled with illustrations and cartoons that are absolutely fascinating. he wrote a lot of letters home.

he had a wicked sense of humor, as you can tell from this cartoon. he sent home this during the war. he kept notes about what was happening, kind of story materials for his future projects. all kind of in preparation for thinking about how he would use this over the course of his career. these are some examples of mail sent to his mother and brother, often with cartoons and requests for cigars that he loved. in march of 1944, fuller grossly underestimated that he had gathered enough materials to keep them busy for six months to a year after the war. in fact, fuller would go to the journals and letters and pull material out and use them in his films over the course of his entire career. this is a photo of fuller he sent to his brother. i just wanted to read his

little excerpt from his memoir because i think it is important to what we are talking about today. "people who have never lived through it will never, never know what war's unfeelingness will feel like. never know the cold taste of metal in your mouth just before the violence begins, the wet toes, the churning in your stomach that seems like it's going to burn a hole in your belly, the dull drumming in your brain, the ghoulish visions come to life, hell, words just can't describe it." he always saw that as a flawed endeavor but incredibly important. on to the big red one, but i think is a key and acknowledged precedent for what spielberg does in his masterful d-day landing scene in "saving private ryan." this still came out in 1980,

but fuller tried to make this film since the 1940's. it took him at best the bulk of his career to get this film made. this is a letter from 1946 i have excerpted about "all quiet on the western front," the wonderful world war i film. "i'm going to do my best to dog you to write it." this is a letter he wrote, a fan letter about the film. this is kind of the first reference i found to him talking about making this film. this is definitely the film fuller wanted to make more than any other. this was reported in 1956 by the hollywood gossip columnist, hedda hopper -- john wayne will be starring in sam fuller's the big red one. this is not happening in 1956, but hopper was a friend of

fuller's. i want to review a little excerpt from a letter that fuller wrote to her on june 11. note that date, 1954. "we have just returned from normandy. it was quite a sensation going back to omaha beach. standing on the same beach 10 years to the minute after my outfit made the initial invasion of france. but the big thrill was when i took marta there. there was a first objective 10 years ago. we lost 1160 men that morning. i showed her the same little old schoolhouse into which we had chased an enemy officer. i showed marta the pillboxes we took and she was horrified as she gasped at the 88's. this is one of dozens of times that fuller was really trying

to return to this formative place and revisit his experiences. these are a couple of images. one is a polaroid on the back of which reads omaha beach. that is fuller with a small 35mm camera, which has no sound and i believe he was using it for location scouting at omaha beach in the 1950's. the other is from a home movie and that is fuller scaling something at normandy. marta fuller wrote a letter to his publicist about this trip in july of 1954. this is what she said. "we went to normandy for the d- day ceremony on omaha beach on june 6. upon our return to california, you will see in the film he managed to take on a cold, rainy day and it tells the story far better than anything i might put on paper at the moment. i will tell you it was rough. i dreaded this return of sammy

to death revisited, knowing it would take a lot out of him. i am glad we went for i'm sure he will remember 1954 omaha rather than 1944. as heartbreaking as it is today with its white marble crosses and stars of david numbering over 9000, it is better than the memory of 1944. marta was wrong. the 1954 image never replaced that 1944 image. but fuller went ahead at the time. by the 1950's warner brothers hired him to write a script that was due in january of 1958 and take him to go on another location scouting trip back to europe. if you look at script materials at the warner brothers archives from the 1958 version, you can see him planning, you can see him using fort riley, kansas for a stand-in for the beach landing scene. none of these efforts came to

fruition, of course. he continued to work on this throughout the 1960's and 1970's. according to fuller, fellow director peter bogdanovich backed out of it said to him if you write the script i will produce it. that is how it happened. fuller started making it in 1978. he had a budget of $4.5 million, which for him was the biggest budget of any film he had ever made for a war film. that is nothing. war films are incredibly expensive. this was his lifelong passion project. he turns in his cut -- and it's 4.5 hours. they went no way. nobody will sit for this. fuller refused to cut anything out of it. lorimar cut it to under two hours without consulting him, which was the heartbreak of his life. he saw the film when it came

out in 1980, you saw less than half of what he hoped the film would be. some of you who are fans may have seen the 2005 reconstruction of the film. that brings it closer to two hours. it is worth seeing. the big red one is the first reconstructions that don't focus on the squatter privates and their unnamed sergeant, all of whom survived the war. of the film, fuller explained, "i did not think many want to go see what the generals are doing, no drilling, no flashbacks, no girlfriends, none of that -- fuller's word not mine -- this is a squat in war, nothing else. most pictures of this kind are semi-work pictures. you watch them learn to sleep for three months. i tried to put the war experience on film. i came close. this is my actual favorite line

fuller had about war, to make a real war movie would be to occasionally fire at the audience during the battle scene. that is right. how can you ever convey what it feels like to be at war? i think it's a brilliant way to remind us a film is always just a representation, even when it is as realistic as possible. the d-day scene is the explosive centerpiece in the midpoint of the film. fuller is trying to create some nugget of that, and drama. i think his representation might've been more precedent- setting and also might've had more pressure -- there is a lot of time in the longest day on the landing that film. in the great one, that sequence

is eight minutes, just a small portion of the film. for the longest they had this wide-angle big view of the day, the big red one focuses on the squadron and a very specific objective, to lay down a torpedo to blow a hole so they can get off the beach. they are predicting a lot of dead germans on the beach. navy artillery fire should've cleared it before they arrived, which is not the case. what fuller does is to capture some of the landing intensity with incoming shells, then dying, explosions all around. it is nowhere near the scale of what we get in the longest day or in the 1998 "saving private ryan" scene. fuller experienced multiple beach landings. i want to read an excerpt from his july 9, 1943 invasion

journal. he switches from talking about this as an experience and uses this original voice. he writes, "my toilet paper and tobacco got wet, gripes a soldier. pfc. howard brown junior, crouched, tense, awaits. the rain falls and brings enemy gunfire. brown feels something dropping on his leg. he reaches down. somebody's pack. it is no pack. it is sergeant redeout shot to the head. fuller's generation reminds me of certain traumas, the way he deals with them in the big red one and anticipates the black representation of death and injury in "saving private ryan." it is very unsentimental, directly with meta-textbook full or in both prose and

cinematic forms. this is day for night shooting and it doesn't look very bright. when you look at the images, both the men encounter dead soldiers all around him and fuller cuts to some wider shots to close-ups of the men on the squadron. as we follow the experience over the course of this scene, this is an example of one of the more ambitious scale shots in the film. this is relatively low-budget. it is nowhere near the scale of the other films they will be talking about. the scene plays out with audience tension in mind as the soldiers try to lay down the bangalore, with each man cut down by german fire. extreme close-ups like you see on the bottom of the screen from the characters in the squad we follow throughout the film who are watching anxiously from an apparently protected spot on the beach. in saving private ryan, there is no safe spot. fuller gives us a little pause

to follow the action that takes us away from the more realistic situation. i think it is worth noting you don't see a single image of the enemy in the big red one's d- day scene, where in the longest day and saving private mine you see it from their perspective. zanuck was a good friend and ally and supporter of fuller. i think he protected him in many ways when his politics are being questioned in the early 1950's. fuller worked with fox for a while. it may be based on historical character, for the guy who leads the mission is named fuller in the longest day. spielberg was also an admirer and used fuller in a cameo role in his strange 1979 post-pearl harbor bombing comedy, "1941."

in the big red one, soldier after soldier makes his way up the beach with a piece of the bangalore. it's not in the protected area, unlike the scene in "saving private ryan." i leave it to the military historians to tell me if that would have ever happened or not. mark hamill, pictured up top, comes face-to-face with a dead soldier and is so stunned that the sergeant has to fire his rifle several times to get him to push on. this is lee marvin as the sergeant firing around him to try to get him out of his stunned state. there is a series of extreme close-ups between the two of them. at one point it seems like he has been taken out by incoming enemy fire but he manages to recover and puts the piece in place that allows them to blow the hole and the wire and gives the scene a sense of closure. this scene, like most everything in the big red one,

has some aspects of personal elements. if you remember the letter from major lawton, fuller landed with an initial assault late and began looking about the beach in an effort to aid wounded and bring about some control. he also commended him for notifying regimental command of the eventual breach that was finally blown in the wire, which meant fuller in the movie "along 100 yards of open beach under constant heavy fire by the enemy and then voluntarily returned to communicate the successful delivery of the message that a section of the wire is open." in the reconstruction version, there is a scene where zab, fuller's stand-in played by robert carey, performs this delivery of news across the dangerous body-strewn beach. he ends up on a body of a fellow soldier, and only when

he pulls back does he realized all the guts are exposed. this representation of something very graphic is an important building block to getting to "saving private ryan." fuller's d-day sequence concludes with an especially poetic gesture, which earlier in the scene fuller stayed on the dead soldier's arm. he returns to it at the midpoint of the scene and again at the end, the water becomes increasingly bloody. hopefully you can discern that from the images, which signals both the duration of the battle and the escalating carnage. the longest day is black and white, as well as relatively bloodless. there is lots of death but none of it explicit. fuller's bloody images are part of this differentiation. that can be traced forward to spielberg. he makes very impactful use of

the color red in this landing scene, and also the kind of graphic representations of death and injury in the film. prior to moving on from the d- day section and the reconstructed version, there is a short but important speech. i suspect many of the in the room are familiar with the speech that is delivered to both the soldiers on the beach and us in the audience. just after zab delivers his message about the successful mission, the colonel declares there are those that are dead and those about to die, so let's get off this god damned beach. fuller credits the speech to colonel george taylor at omaha.

nearly 30 years prior to making big red one, sergeant zach, played by lee evans, excellent film if you never seen it, is the steel helmet, a similar version of the same beach when he is reminiscing about world war ii would set a moral clarity to him that he felt was lacking in korea. even more interesting and i think suggestive of the influence he had on his buddy darryl zanuck, it is also in the longest day with robert mitchum. we can trace an arc from the longest day to the big red one to saving private ryan. the latter film spends this nailbiting 25 or so minutes on the beach landing scene. like all great storytellers, spielberg knows the power of keeping characters that the audience identifies with. keep in mind that this d-day

landing happens at the beginning of saving private ryan. it is an introduction to those characters which is very different than the others i have been talking about. a dramatic and sustained opening it is, showing a strong commitment to picturing grotesque realities of combat, the vomiting, the surprise death before the men even get into the water, the unsparing look at bodies torn apart by enemy fire. i'm a little envious of it. he died the year before saving private line was released. he did not see it. spielberg is so masterfully creating a sense of identification with his characters. and its landing scene, the way the camera bobs up and down so we are in the water with the soldiers. a kind of simulation style. that is all i have to say.

thank you very much and now i turn the floor over to my colleague. [applause] thank you. good morning. i don't have a presentation, but we can keep the slides. that is fine. my presentation is going to be about "the longest day." i was looking at what i prepared and it occurred to me that there is a parallel to "saving private ryan ," because sometimes the mission is a man and the man really is called ryan and he really is lost in the chaos of d-day. in the case of my remarks, ryan is cornelius ryan, the journalist who wrote the book "the longest day."

which was adapted into the motion picture. i will try, for my remarks, to recover something which i think is the strength of that book and use it as the fixed point in what i am doing. for me, the point of thinking about a history film is not to use that film as a way to understand the moment it depicts. in this case, i am not trying to understand 1944. but rather the moment in which the film was made. in the case of "the longest day ," 1962, in the case of "saving private ryan," 1998. i am fascinated by the way in which the fixed point of history or the fixed point of the source material is changed in order to suit the needs of the time in which the film was made. at a number of points in my

remarks, that is what i will be doing. using cornelius ryan's sources text as a fixed point for the adaptation to see, what was it that they kept from the source text and what did they change? sometimes, tiny details are changed. i want to get at, why might that have been altered? first of all, cornelius ryan. how many of you -- i am sure you have all seen "the longest day," right? how many of you have read the book? have you also read his other books like "a bridge too the far," "the last battle." he was originally, he was born in ireland in 1920. this is very significant because ireland was neutral in world war ii. he did not have to be involved.

he chose to be involved. as a young journalist, he moved to the united kingdom, he took a job with the daily telegraph which was interested in young men who did not have an obligation to fight in the armed forces. and he particularly had a coverage in the air war. his training was not a formal academic training. we knew he trained as a violinist at a music academy in dublin. and had not been to university or anything. he came to know his craft the hard way, through experience. he only deployed to the continent after d-day. he was assigned to general patton's army and wrote about that. at the end of the war, he

joined time magazine and became a bureau chief for them in jerusalem where they covered the war of independence of israel. it was that experience that reminded him of the need in creating a historical account of a moment to bring in multiple perspectives. no one perspective, he felt, could capture the offering. he was growing up on an island, he always said, starting to read irish history, he became so aware that history is dependent upon who is telling the story. no two irish history books seem to be able to agree with each other, let alone once a british book was brought into the picture. he came at the whole question of history from this point of view, you need to have multiple

perspectives. from my point of view as a historian, i think this has been one of his great contributions. to insist on having multiple perspectives. having every side of the story and trying to emphasize with all of the people, even the so- called bad guys. in the 1950's, he came to work for colliers magazine, was working in journalism. particularly did well with a treatment of the andrea doria ocean liner sinking. which he adapted into a book. suddenly when everything was going well, disaster struck -- because colliers magazine went bust. he lost basically his meal ticket. in 1956, he revisited normandy. and became interested in writing a full-scale treatment of what had happened there. the question that he asked when

he was walking up and down -- when he was looking down onto the beach from the atlantic emplacements -- is what connected the germans who were here to defend and the allies who were here to attack? what was it that connected them? he came to the conclusion, the cable that joined those men together, was fear. he wanted to try and explore what it felt like to be in that situation. he formed the idea of writing a massive treatment of the one- day d-day. he planned the book to be released on the 15th anniversary of d-day which was going to be in 1959. and began touting the proposal around new york publishers. the one that fits was the least

fashionable publisher at the moment, the readers digest, who said they would publish short articles but also they would pay for the research of the whole thing. this was a great breakthrough. his first move was to place an advertisement in american newspapers, asking for veterans to get in contact and share stories. he then repeated this exercise and france, britain, and germany. once he had got veterans coming he sent out a questionnaire. then he used the questionnaire to hone in on the people he wanted to do in-depth interviews with. he also did parallel archive work going through regimental war diaries, and message logs to pinpoint the time and place that different things have happened.

he is going over his notes, he is incredibly careful with recording what people said. he is going back over his notes with president kennedy and says mr. president, i don't understand why when the news came through that you had won, you told me you felt angry. why did you feel angry? the president said, no, what i actually said was i feel hungry. [laughter] i think it is typical of ryan that you would want to get a quote absolutely right. he is a writer on the way out.

he collides with a hollywood producer, who is on the way down. he has been in hollywood for a long time. his credits go back to the 1920's. his studio has bogged down in the project to film the story of cleopatra. he had worked in world war ii with the u.s. army. and he saw the cinema as being a way of actually changing people's attitudes to world affairs. this is where my work as a film historian collides with my work as a scholar of public diplomacy and somebody who is interested in how individuals can be involved in international affairs. because he believed as a filmmaker, he could change people's attitudes to world affairs. 1944, he made a film called "wilson," which emphasized the values of internationalism and world war i. he is looking for

ways to revive an interest in a collective enterprise, allies working together to make the world a better place. he sees a d-day as being a thing that could tell that story, and also a surefire box office success to revive the fortunes of his movie studios which is 21st century fox. he buys the rights to the longest day for $175,000, and sets about getting the film made. there are three key decisions in creating "the longest day." the first is to allow contributing countries to the story to have their own film directors direct the relevant sequences. he hires a german to direct the german sequences. bernhard wicki was an ex- communist. he had been jailed by the nazis. he was then in the german army

as an occupier in france. he had come to prominence with an amazing german war film called die brucke about a small group of boys who defend the bridge from the american advance. it came out in 1959. then ken annakin, who was a filmmaker who worked with documentaries and world war ii, and the u.s. directed by andrew martin, the second unit director from hollywood. he had done a lot of work on ben hur and had a great professional reputation. second key decision was to use an all-star cast. this is maybe one of the most remembered aspects of "the longest day." it turns the film into a collective act of remembrance that suddenly, it seems like hollywood is remembering world war ii by having all of these stars pop up. rod steiger comes on for two minutes, says his line, then

you don't see him later in the movie. i am told no actor worked longer than four days on "the longest day." people were just rotating in or rotating up. some doing it as volunteers. this helped with the marketing. it made the film interesting and relevant to a diverse range of people. it had been used before in the bible story, "the greatest story ever told" where we have these tiny cameos from major people. also the cast had symbolic value. the french actors who were selected are people who were known from the french movies made during the war. there was a way in which the film was working with people whose potential audiences had emotional investment. in the four americans, there was a special meaning for john wayne. casting john wayne as benjamin vande fort, colonel vandervoort, who would have

been -- i think the person was younger than john wayne. john wayne is ridiculously old to be playing this character. he is in his mid 50's. vandervoort was 27 on d-day. there has to be a reason why john wayne was chosen. you see a generational split as they seek to cast young actors in the role of the enlisted men. robert wagner, a teen star at that point, plays one of the rangers. richard boehmer is in it. paul anka. all of these people had great meaning and came out of the teen culture from the 1950's. i think this was more than just marketing the film and making it relevant to young people. it was about building a generational recognition and also starting to show generational dynamics, as if

the teens of the 1950's could be led by the father figures of the 1940's. even in "the longest day," it is about connecting to the father figure. in the question of what bits of the stories were told, there is emphasis on the competence of american leaders. and the courage that they show, exposing themselves under fire, and how we can have confidence in this generation going forward. the key decision is to use its veterans, multiple advisors to focus on military to emphasize authenticity of locations in action. amazing things they did was to rebuild the gliders that did not exist anymore. and use them to re-create the landing sequences. from the book, what is retained, there is a multiple

perspective format. lots of small stories brought together. some of them quirky, some of them sad, to create a collective mood. i think it is particularly interesting the way in which it focuses on soldiers' superstition and the stories soldiers tell themselves to try and find a way of getting through the day and rationalizing a random experience. both the film and book are honest about the role of error and random death from the nasty things that happened. its ranges have shown shooting, surrendering germans. the german story emphasizes german attempts to guess what their allies are doing. it goes into the reasons for their failure to repulse the invasion. there is an emphasis on hitler's poor management. he is shown as being asleep and unable to respond. and insistent that the real

invasion will take place at the port of calais. normandy must be a diversion. you don't have an actor playing hitler, but he dominates as an absent presence. it is very interestingly done. this human -- and there is humor in the film. actually, in the film, the germans tend to be the characters that generate the humor. the scene where the only two aircraft available is basically played for laughs with an air force colonel giving -- he is very angry on the telephone and flies down the beach. in the book, ryan reports people actually saying they admired that somebody would do this. despite the opposition, somebody would attempt to fly

and repel the invasion. one of the criticisms that is put against "the longest day," especially from the vantage point of 1989, is that the violence is so sanitized. this was despite -- for the time, it did as much as it could. the producers guild tried -- sorry, the production code administration, the pca, tried to tone down the violence. asking zanuck to have fewer dead bodies at the scene. he refused. they also try to take out the ambiguity, they did not want to have american troops shown shooting people as they tried to surrender. zanuck refused. what they do cut out from the book is they cut down on the number of parachuters being killed. it would be very painful to

watch people drowning in full kit. that is removed. they don't really deal with canadians. they cut out a scene where canadian troops revealed to have cut the throats of surrendered german prisoners. they don't show the british submarines leaving a pathway for the ships to follow which is an important scene in the book. they leave out the intelligence panic. they leave out -- one of the things that amazes me about d- day is the associated press accidentally announced d-day two days early. luckily, nobody noticed or thought it was an error. more significantly, it cuts out the stories of ordinary germans. there are much longer scenes in the books where small groups of germans are introduced and

placed under fire. there is one scene where a captain will not let them surrender and as conditions get worse and worse, they are desperate to surrender and in the end, they are able to surrender. that is cut out. some new material is added in. particularly there is a french resistance character based on genuine historical resistance. she is a female, played by arena demo. you might ask, why have it -- why have a young female lead? this is the less attractive side of daryl zanuck. he was interested in starlet. it was said that every day 4:00, a new prospective starlet would be brought to his rooms in hollywood for the casting couch. here we are in the years of -- the post harvey weinstein's.

but he was the original hollywood sexual predator. he was casting in france for the longest day, met and began a relationship with the actor. once she was his girlfriend, she needed to have a big part in the film. so she did. there is a little bit of historical sleight of hand. a historical role was actually after d-day, the character worked after d-day. but she is brought into the build up before d-day as a way of introducing the french resistance. some other things i may like to come up in questioning. i looked at the marketing of "the longest day," which places emphasis on the scale of the

film, how much money had been spent, how authentic uniforms and weapons were. and on the stars. zanuck pushed forward his own role. he actually had compared himself to eisenhower -- but added, when eisenhower did it, he already had the men and the planes whereas i had to find the men and the planes. he actually placed himself somewhere in advance of eisenhower in having restaged the day. the studio put out a study guide to encourage people to think about "the longest day" in an educational way. the final set of questions asked students to think about the value of war. zanuck argued in one of his interviews that war was a terrible waste. what about the value of tricks? how were tricks and deception used in "the longest day"?

how does it compare to other war movies? as with "saving private ryan," part of the marketing of "the longest day" was the fact of the young actors involved had gone through training and were admired by the veterans who were on the set. there were a number of newspaper stories about how the ranges were terribly impressed that robert wagner could get up in the actual pointer hawk in the way they had done it in world war ii. the film was a great success. it became -- it made a lot of money for 20th century fox and redeemed darrell zanuck's career. the historian and great friend of this institution, stephen ambrose, recalls that he just gave up on talking about d-day

without talking about "the longest day." he got used to introducing norman cota as robert mitcham in "the longest day." or benjamin vandervoort as john wayne in "the longest day." cornelius ryan, realized he had been on a great formula. he went on to write "the last battle." and "a bridge too far." he died of cancer in 1974. he sold the rights to "the last battle" which was never made and the rights to "a bridge too far" which was made. it came out in 1976.

the multiple perspective narrative has been taken up by other writers and was also used in other forms of motion pictures. re-watching the longest day, i realized it anticipates the disaster movies of the 1970s. the idea of having multiple vignettes was a way of showing how an event happens to many people at the same time. zanuck doubles down in war pictures and is involved in the development of a number of classics including patent. he has been earned by tora tora tora. he puts a lot of effort into it and it drops at the box office. looking back on that film, it has been part of remembrance. it is watched and replayed on tv as a way of recalling the day. and i think we now revisit the

film as part of remembering if you like. it is interesting that the oldest stars have endured and the younger stars are forgotten. so whilst at the time, somebody like paul anka was known and recognized, you only have to go to wikipedia to find out what it was he did and you have a little -- somehow there's a certain anonymity for the younger cast that they didn't have at the time. it is amazing looking at the film how our ideas of acting have changed. what realism looks like has changed, and how the emphasis of hollywood has changed, too. i think the biggest change is in the representation of the enemy. the way in which in 1962, it was necessary because the germans were the allies of the west to talk about germany in a compassionate way. and to make

an attempt to understand the german position. if you compare that to saving private ryan, i would say the opening germans in saving private ryan have more in common with the orcs in ortt of the rings than the germans you see in the longest day. i also think it is important that in the longest day there is an emphasis on the allies that the french and the british are given equal standing in the telling of the story. in fact there were more british troops used in the day than u.s. troops. this is not -- this is one of the absences in saving private ryan. there isn't even an attempt to talk about the british experience. except this line about how horrible the general is. saving private ryan was serving other needs. that the united states had in the night -- which didn't include acknowledging and affirming alliances. that was about going alone.

these both have consequences and shape the way a film is put together. >> they need to assert a way of taming young people going into the 1960s. and probably the high water roach of the implied understanding of germany and others like this. along with the submarine hunt movie. i think it is great value today

in this reporting. i wish more stories were told from all sides. and i hope that at some point in the future, people will go back to his perspective and more historical movies will have this kind of multi- contributed perspective. for me and to anticipate a question about the best movie, to be honest it is though one in my head when i'm reading the longest day. that has the realism and i find it terribly moving. i look forward to the discussion. [ applause ] >> i will be wandering the pavilion floor to be moderated by the floor. we do have a question online with the 12 8:00 longest day and those are all films and either

one of you could answer this. differences or favorites or your own personal favorites. can you elaborate on the classics? >> i like the longest day best because it has it is people in them and one of them likes the bagpipe. >> i am a fan of the longest day as well. it was the longest day that had us in. i wonder before we can get to questions, i was wondering about one thing that you said about what realism looks like and how it changes every time. it's very interesting and also what it sounds like. this is an exercise if you ever want to really ask variance that experience, close your eyes and listen to it.

it is extraordinary and it sounds so different than these other landing scenes. this is a matter of technology partly. and also really refining what it would like to be part of this . >> that's a good point but each generation has a different thing it emphasizes in terms of realism. as viewers would become more cute. i don't know if you had the feeling of watching jurassic park and now you can enjoy the original jurassic park movie and that effect is 100 percent convincing. we're no longer convinced and our eyes and ears get better and our expectations have changed. the effects and the projections and longest day now seem

incredibly obvious and unconvincing. >> the question at the front -- the crashed -- the question at the front to the right. >> told me about what the critics think and also about the german actors. >> the first thing is the critics were divided. summer stagey and carinae. ironically, some of them complained about incident that were real incidents. they were not the motion picture. yes they were germans. and number of germans. to me the most moving thing i found had been a german occupier and was famously kind to the

french. when french people arrested he would try to cheer them up when they were trying to find out if they would be shot or not. he would do these clown routines and the frenchman had written a novel remembering this kind german while they were waiting for their death. this was probably the greatest shots in the movie. he turns and says, they're coming for me. his father was a veteran of the eastern front. what we get to know in the longest day they are older because they are higher up in the ranks. there men who are enlisted in world war ii not playing senior officers. they're not actually playing

themselves or trying to re- create the people in charge of them but that gives you a authenticity. it had happened before in the western front as they were veterans of world war i and wearing different uniforms with germans and americans and french all playing each other. they should have a special draw on our authenticity. and are present on the set when the particular themes are shot. you cannot say you cannot show that and that did not happen and please change it around. if it is not going on requests

from participants observing the filmmaking. >> this is especially positive and every studio releases a from the send out press releases. i wonder how much of the when we spent $10 million on this picture and how much of it is a critical reaction that is not drawing from the press releases that have more power than they do now. >> the reviews of the bridge too far and they say it is ridiculous that the man that young would be in command of troops.

but he was exactly the right age. in a way that this starts to give the public the idea that they should be some john nguyen type of striker like the longest day. hollywood undercuts the reality and hollywood realism undercuts the reality of actual lives and it makes people doubt things that are completely act it. there's a strange relationship between realism and audience expectations or reality and audience expectations.'s new this gets precisely at this idea that hollywood can supplant history in some cases.

this is how we think of some of these things because it is so powerful and easy to grasp on the big screen as opposed to reading them. >> a question to the table to your left lease. >> a couple of points i would like to comment on. how about when the japanese attacked pearl harbor put there was adverse audience reaction and there was not anybody in the japanese command known to americans back then. also at that time we were at the height of the cold war and

the cuban missile crisis. to present anything negatively like that then would be something where they have gotten much co-op oration. private ryan comes along and we have won the cold war and we have won the 40th and 50th celebrations and people can more easily accept the darker side of it later on. >> we could not have known that the berlin crisis was going to have been are that the cuban missile crisis would going on when longest day was released. it certainly met in emotional need. gave reassurance to audiences and reminded them of what the underlying values and prince of those were.

this came out in a difficult moment in the relationship between the united states and asia because the vietnam war but i don't want to get involved in tora tora tora, because it has been a long time since i have thought about the film . but this is what has become known as the greatest generation. you have to think about the filmmaker case as they were passing away in the 1990s and the person they were rebelling against again the 70s but now rebelling in the 90s. the films i look up to that contrast was star wars with the father dark figure in 30 -- as darth vader.

and the generation that had pushed those feelings and now leaving life behind. suddenly sympathetic and trying to understand those people in the second cycle of star wars films where it is about how a good person could do bad things and reestablishing that generation as a heroic generation. think private ryan is part of the process and revisiting this section and admiration that people from the perspective of the 90s. the problem with probably -- the problem with private ryan is that it uses language of the 1990s. so many things are realistic and it's like a train driven by a great locomotive. there bantering like they are in acquainted herrity know from. -- there bantering like they in

the -- like there in a quentin tarantino film . the script and private ryan is dated very badly. >> and to support your idea of the greatest generation and the framing device for the film and revisiting normandy. that is the way into the picture and the one person's memory of what happened. >> i am going to have moderators preference here. we brought up star wars and i am of it child of star wars. one month prior to the big release was empire strikes back. how did fuller feel about one of his stars maybe out chaining his fellow to ride the

coattails of the second star wars film? >> it's good any time you have someone from your from come to prominence in another phone. the box office did not make its money back and it was not a great success. it was also greatly diminished version of what they wanted to release. that was a time when it would have been hard to predict what would have have end. but they spent their career giving roles in films and releasing something in them that other directors and producers had not yet seen. >> do you think that he cast mark hamilton deliberately? and all three of these phone to

see the attempt at generational casting and an iconic father figure but also is symbolic younger generation figure. you see a crossgenerational message within the phone. >> also keep in mind that this was resolved at the end of world war i. they were interested in soldiers that came back to fight and subsequent wars. that was when history repeats itself and we run into it again. and the young guys might say, 30 have a monument for us that was from the last war. >> the front table right here. >> comments in question.

he briefly mentioned but you left the question hanging as to why this position was left. i would suggest that it's an attempt to redeem celebrity status to stay out of combat in the second world war. the more substantive further questing question -- further casting question is at the beginning of the film, they were about the same age when asked about the combat veterans. and i just wonder about having a 55-year-old sergeant. we have this wonderful ravaged face and i think it underrecognized. i'm curious what the connection is and how they made the decision to use someone so much older than his sergeants would

have been.>> that's a great question. i don't really have a definitive answer to that. i know fuller really wanted marvin and needed to talk him into the role. i think he was hesitant because of his age to play that role. but fuller really loved playing with veterans and playing with people he did not have to center basic training to understand what is like. the idea of authenticity would have appealed to him and as time went on it would have been very different casting in the 1950s and the 1960s. but in the 1970s if you're looking for combat veteran, you are getting older and that's the reality. >> a little bit of a preamble. for someone who has watched dozens of world war ii movies,

i am always fascinated by the arc of the movies changes and particularly the quality. you have the story of g.i. joe and the battleground. in my opinion they're very good movies but in the 1950s there is not really a lot in my opinion except for one movie. and that's a movie where the movie does not co-opt rated all because it shows cowardice. it seems to me and just a comment, but how are these movies made? hollywood are famous for copycats. if someone comes out with a great movie, i have to get mine. you seed in the 60s with the

great escape and the longest day and then a huge flop in the battle of the bulge where you go through that and who is the lunatic making this in spain during the middle of winter and in the closing scene you don't see any snow or anything at all but just a comment about how does hollywood look at more movies and the factors of why they make what they make and when they make it and that kind of thing. you are the folks who study this better than we do. take what you want and thanks. >> that is a book of an answer my friend. that is a big question. >> i find it a fascinating question. part of the answer has to do more with what people want to get out of world war ii? 's world were there to stand for itself? or is it there to stand for some kind of proxy for the moral purpose of the country?

once the united states was involved in vietnam it became difficult to represent world war ii. you can see how the film and world war ii has changed by vietnam and how it has almost become more realistic and also more morally ambiguous. i'm fascinated by the presence of world war ii in star wars. and how in some ways star wars is used as a way to have the moral certainties of the first wave of world war ii phones without the complexity of a first vietnam world war ii film. we now move into a situation where instead of star wars being about world war ii, many young people world war ii is about star wars. they're looking at it as a base of good and bad.

is very distant from something that you would recognize as history. >> let me also say one thing at talk about extensively in the book is the dealings with the department of defense and the department of the army. and all of these films the dod often refused corporations for a number of reasons other too lengthy to go into. but if you want military operation teaches have to get approved. you need to have some things in it and not other things that may have tarnished the image of the american military. this is acceptable in terms of this representation and very different before and during and after the war. that certainly shaped the nature of what you can and cannot do in a film that has

any stamp of approval or participation.>> you have the situation were they have insisted on taking trophies being cut out of the phone. is it correct that they are not in the film? what do you say? >> in the middle road to your right. >> i am by far not an expert on john wayne. my wife is the local expert where we live. it's my understanding that he tried to join the military and went to the army and went to the navy and i don't recall why he was turned down but he was turned down from serving. i think it bothered him a lot. >> there is even a story that hugh was with oss trying to

recruit him but they sent the letter to the house of his ex- wife and john did get a certificate of dissipation in the oss. i think he is very guilty about it afterwards and it certainly affected his desire to be supportive and patriotic. saying he is a super patriot because it was no way that he would have hoped. i think that there is something to that. however, john wayne was not taking on the longest day as a charity case. he was paid a lot of money to do it and insisted on being paid 10 times much -- 10 times as much as the other members of the cast because they wanted to

make comments about the alamo. i think it is $250,000 that he paid could be a film. there is a reason that they really wanted to have john wayne . >> i would like to bring up something that we should all keep in mind. we have done a lot of research and written some articles. also, in years past, you may think it's ridiculous but you learn quickly what not to carry when you're hiking on a hot day. and also it leads you to appreciation. i would like to make a point about world war ii.

reenacting civil war is easy to do with your cannons and horses and a bunch of guys marching along carrying muskets and you are real. for vietnam, you cannot get the perspective just how huge war is . the tanks and the trucks in the artillery and even small units in vietnam almost cannot cap sure it. so, for world war ii, you have to reduce it down to a small unit. you have to create the feeling of a huge up ration. wouldn't you are in the military and you are in one of these things, even the special unit doesn't know about this stuff.

in order to try to put world war ii on the screen, you have to focus on small units and that is very hard to do because small units do not up for it just by themselves. you end up with a dirty dozen and this type of movie. the second best movie ever made also did that. it was one with clint eastwood and they had to capture heroes. it was a brilliant movie. for the purposes of war they managed to take something big and turned it into something small. with saving private ryan, i disagree with you about this. this is exactly what people do.

i disagree with you about the banter, the script. >> that the things that they're saying, there actually using lines from quentin tarantino . it is not 1940s banter, it is 1990s banter. >> this is 1965 banter when i was in vietnam. >> and and kelly's heroes, the banter in there also. >> this is a good example of when a world war ii movie is dealing with the president. this would make sense as a character in world war ii but he is basically a heavy. it's a great invention but this part of the film having a double existence and existing in its own time and existing in the time it is being resented.

surely there will be banter. but if you're interested for making sense for the banter to represent the time or if the film is very much of the moment in which it is made. >> thank you for bringing that up because this is an important reminder. our war and war movies and that includes documentaries. you have to be able to tell the stories that people can digest and understand. to tell a story of a war or one day in a war is what longest day is trying to do. it has this ambition of the wide-angle perspective you have to be able to create a narrative otherwise people will not watch it or understand it.

>> we have an online question in regards to what the gentleman was just's he came to and this is open to either of you. do you believe there anymore unique or original ways that tora tora tora -- the d-day could be presented in film? are there any unique or original ways that d-day could be presented in films moving forward ? >> i think the answer to that has more to do with technology. even 20 years down the line, what steven spielberg does is so heightened. i barely received during the big things on the big screen and holding my breath and the capability we have for virtual reality and salon will you something quite interesting is that. i don't know exactly what it will be like it will be more experiential. isn't that what all of these

directors are trying to do too far behind the scenes in the film? it's the more that you can immerse something in the feeling of being here and with all of their senses and all of the senses that you can activate in this case. i suspect that we will see that at some point. >> i would agree that each generation needs to find the things that are meaningful to that generation story. we have one project at the moment that pertains to d-day . that will have a special authenticity and the special meaning for people who are involved with it. our collective memory does not include all of the tellings of d-day . there new ways of thinking about it that are already out the of which we are unaware. in the early 1970s there was a

british tv movie are very talented writer. this movie includes a veteran returning to d-day who has a mental disability . he was brain damaged and lauren mccall, -- lauren mccall and older woman and then meet each other and the interact and it's quite funny but quite sad. the idea on focusing just on the returning veterans gets into a whole way of thinking about memory of d-day and important ways. it occurred to me that there are enough stories in the longest day to tough up whole thing over again from the same material and from a very compelling movie but with any of the materials in the motion picture.

these could just be submarines on d-day particularly and there particularly interesting. also, the polish involvement because there were polish people who were part of defending and part of the invasion army. i want to know what it would feel like to be polish and trying to repel the invasion and how does that play out? >> we have about 10 minutes before the break so we should be able to get to most of the questions. >> there was a 4 1/2 original directors version is that version lost is still available? >> it's lost and that's why in 2005 we oversaw the attempt to reconstruct that based on script materials.

there was a discovery in the archives of some of the material that had been cut out. that is literally an attempt to stitch it back together and that was just under three hours so does add one hour to the release version. >> i have a question for both of you actually. both of you have talked about these movies in the context of the times that they came out. last year, there were two sums that came out on different subject matter. one is called that we always have casablanca. that is the story were galling -- recalling humphrey bogart and casablanca and also the refugees of europe. another came out about the and ears and gary cooper and how they.

with the movie. my question for the two of you is have either of you thought about writing any books about any of these fantastic four movies in the context of the time that they came out? >> i have not. but it is certainly very interesting because this is on my mind. the behind-the-scenes stories are so fascinating. like the big red line and to think about making a film in the 40s or 50s or 60s or 70s and it does not come out until the 1980s. it's an incredible story and and entire book could be written about that one >> i do work on other genres and about films about the reddish empire and how they

reflect the times in which they are made and looking at pictures like men who would be king or indiana jones or what is going on in the because it reflects in the world empire and also how images of the future change. and really how we think the future will be will be very revealing of the present. and then with 1989 and things like that. much everything i do is trying to look for the moment and using film as a window on historical moments in which the film is made. rather than a sort of textbooks to the past. >> we just recorded a podcast yesterday and a lot of that was

really something in about the context and how the film was really looking forward and trying to figure out how to not dismiss the task and move on from it but reintegrate especially when you are dealing with films that are made in the aftermath, it is always changing in terms of that perspective. i think it's so interesting. >> not every war gets a film made about it people in my generation went to the vault. they did not have a film to revisit their experience. have to look in other people's phones the line was something that they recognize. this is a great luxury and being a country that has enough of the film industry to tell these important stories.

>> and it's also very selling. inc. about proportionately how many films were made about world war ii versus korea or vietnam and that tells us a lot about how this conflict is perceived in the culture. >> and the reality of filmmaking is that it is a business and you have to think that enough people worldwide will be interested in the story to make it worth telling. >> when fuller was making his second war film which were his second the war films and it was expanding then it was in a very difficult time in conflict is really hard for him to convince his producers that he could make a second from that people would want to go and see. it was depressing news and are people going to want to go see

that on-screen? there is always that challenge. >> one thing i want to get to that has come up so far is that in the longest day, there is a film that is pretty much repeated once by an american and once by a german. it raises really interesting philosophical points. early in the film, they are getting ready to try to choose if will go on 6 june or if the weather will be right. the character says all the problem with the weather makes me wonder who's side is god already on and in the context of the film and an hour and a half later as the comment on what is happening and they say this is disastrous and it makes me wonder, whose side are we really on. both sides in the conflict believed they were doing

something right and that good was on their side. that should be troubling. just because we think we are doing good in the world and doing what is right, that should not stop us from really reflecting on that and considering if we are sure if this is the right move to do. i thought that was really interesting that they would include that type of moral tension and perspective in the longest day. >> to your far right please. >> fabulous presentation. i wonder what fuller would have done if he had had the ability that we saw takes place in and of brothers -- in band of brothers and the sequential presentation of this stuff

which is coming out again with more scenes from band of brothers for example. >> it pains me that they did not to make multiple versions of the story actually. that could have been the case. we agreed when they agreed to do it in part because this was practice for making a big war film and another 18 years. i think fuller was so invested and he was part. he has one of those trajectories where he sought so many different friends. that he could have told so many more stories. in fact, his journals and his letters and a lot of unpublished writing. i believe some of it will be

coming out in a collection with the university of california in the next year or two with unpublished writing including journals and letters. this material it would have been wonderfully had not been so constrained by financial circumstances. >> i was really taken with the quality with what was on the screen and the way in which i think they capture other do a better job of representing something that seems like a more authentic story in the interpersonal dimension then saving private ryan. it's an amazing art form that has emerged with the idea of the in-depth telling of the story with a high budget on cable-television platforms. that is an amazing tool and it's terrific to see what is now being done and that there

really at the opening of this new era of television of the sopranos and these other long format shows that are rewriting the book on visual storytelling. >> fuller had a real disdain for the kind of strategic higher-level stories. he thought it should always be about the men on the ground and that was where the story already was. he had so many that he wanted to tell. >> we are over our time just a little bit. we have one last question?>> two last questions. that with four hours, fuller must have known i was not going to make it. i want to know what you think he was thinking and it seems like a real go for broke to

play with the studio. the question i have in general as we are talking about how we make a movie and i think that saving private ryan focuses very much on what we're focusing on which is the veterans and getting the stories when we can. and then you have the films right after the war like days of our lives. and i think about the combat team and when you have to get these veterans stories out. and trying to get a particular story else to recognize the soldiers. is that kind of a fashion too? to go from focusing on soldiers and getting their stories to let's use world war ii as a backdrop for lighter social and

political message? with that be a fashion? >> do you want to answer that? >> >> >> how would you do the two our version of that? it has been building up and it would be easier to do in 1956 and in 1980. this is one shot. strategically, it was probably not a good move as he lost control of what was real. but i don't know how you can be

as for connie and as you have to be building a film when it is so personable >> they could not have done multiple versions to have the four our version showing on tv. and that it exists in multiple old lengths. and it maybe six hours. >> thank you all very much and that is the conclusion of our first session. i think that is a great start. martin? >> saving private ryan came out 20 years ago this summer. more from the symposium in a moment regarding the accuracy of saving private ryan and the health advisors will help to make the movie realistic. and how world war ii is connected to the movie.

this is normally only seen on weekends but this week the u.s. houses on break and we're assuring you a little bit of our weekend lineup. >> friday evening american history and primetime looks at the shenandoah battlefield conference on the history and future of confederate icons and the monuments in the battle flag. is include the civil war historian and the american civil war museum ceo krista coleman. american history tv and primetime friday at 8 pm eastern here on c-span. congressional historians richard baker and donald ritchie . >> one question i hear people asking all the time is if this is the most uncivil time in history. >> you have to be close if you think of another period but certainly the years leading to the