1. Behind the Scenes of The Red Badge of
Courage (1951)

2. Click above for video
Sydney Pollack introducing the 1951 movie "The Red Badge of Courage" starring Audie Murphy
for Turner Classic Movies .

3. The making of the movie…
• Director John Huston used unusual compositions and camera angles
drawn from film noir to create a battlefield environment that is
foreboding and alienating.
• Huston believed his film could have been "his best," but as he tells
Lillian Ross: "They don't want me to make this picture. And I want
to make this picture."
• How the film was made is the subject of Ross's 1952 book Picture, a
masterpiece of journalism, originally in The New Yorker magazine as
a 5-part series.
• MGM cut the film's length to 69 minutes and added narration
following supposedly poor audience test screenings.
• View the made-for-TV movie version from 1974, starring Richard
Thomas (of The Waltons fame). Note the differences in production
techniques from the earlier (1951) movie.

4. The leading actors were chosen for the 1951 film as much for their offscreen fame as for their acting skills. For example, the character of Henry
Fielding, “the Youth,” was played by World War II hero, Audie Murphy.
Click above for more information

5. …as Tom Wilson, the “Loud Soldier”
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Bill Mauldin was a sergeant for the 45th Division's press corps and for the Army’s “Stars and
Stripes” newspaper during World War II . His acting career was not his “day job” after the War;
he was a Pulitzer-prize winning cartoonist for St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

6. The cartoon character
“Willie” (left) and his G.I.
buddy “Joe” were Maudin’s
Pulitzer-prize winning
creations.
Click above for more information

7. Narrated by James
Whitmore.
The studio decided to
add voice-over narration
to clarify plot events for
the viewer, a strategy
Huston opposed.

8. Perennial Hollywood tug-of-war:
Art vs. Commerce
"The only picture I ever made
that seems as though it's
going to be marked down
simply as a box-office failure is
The Red Badge of Courage,"
Huston told the film's
producer, “and I thought that
was the best picture I ever
made."
http://journalism.nyu.edu/publishing/archives/portfolio/books/book59.html

9. Click above to view the video of the movie