The Green Berets is a 1968 American war film directed by John Wayne and Ray Kellogg, and starring Wayne, David Janssen and Jim Hutton, based on the 1965 novel by Robin Moore. Much of the film was shot in the summer of 1967. Parts of the screenplay bear little relation to the novel, although the portion in which a woman seduces a North Vietnamese communist general and sets him up to be kidnapped by Americans is from the book.
The Green Berets is strongly anti-communist and pro-South Vietnam. It was released at the height of American involvement in the Vietnam War, the same year as the Tet Offensive against the largest cities in South Vietnam. John Wayne was so concerned by the anti-war sentiment in the United States, he wanted to make this film to present the pro-military position. He requested and obtained full military cooperation and materiel from President Lyndon B. Johnson and the United States Department of Defense. John Wayne bought the film rights to Robin Moore's book for $35,000 and 5% of undefined profits of the film.Moore, Robin Introduction to 1999 edition The Green Berets The Green Berets: The Amazing Story of the U.S. Army's Elite Special Forces Unit 2007 Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
The film was a financial success at the box office, but received almost universally negative reviews from critics.
Plot Reporter George Beckworth attends a Special Forces briefing about the reasons for American military involvement in the Vietnam War. When Beckworth doubts the value of U.S. intervention, Green Beret Colonel Mike Kirby asks him if he has ever been to Vietnam, which influences him to report on events there.
Meanwhile, Kirby is assigned to assist the South Vietnamese forces. As he prepares to depart, he catches Sgt. Petersen appropriating supplies, but decides to utilise his skills on his team. Arriving in South Vietnam, they meet Beckworth, whom Kirby allows to accompany them to their camp. Despite signs of humanitarian work, he remains unconvinced of the need to be in Vietnam.
At the camp, they meet a young war-orphan, Ham Chuck, whose family was slaughtered. Ham Chuck, along with his dog Jamoke, takes a liking to Sgt. Petersen. Petersen takes him in as if he were his own son.
Following an enemy attack, M/Sgt. Muldoon notices a South Vietnamese soldier acting suspiciously and knocks him out, allowing South Vietnamese Captain Nghiem to interrogate him. After Beckworth sees Nghiem torture a confession from the soldier, he confronts Kirby, who justifies the act by telling Beckworth that their enemies are ruthless killers who deserve no legal protections of any sort in this new kind of war.
A few days later, while accompanying Kirby and his team on a patrol in the nearby mountains, Beckworth finds that the granddaughter of a village chief he had befriended earlier has been tortured and executed by the Viet Cong for cooperating with the Americans.
The next night, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops launch a massive attack on the camp, and Beckworth is forced to fight alongside the Green Berets; he also helps move villagers into the camp to protect them from the crossfire.
Eventually, enemy sappers breach the perimeter by blowing openings in the barbed wire fences around the camp, and the Green Berets and South Vietnamese are forced to fall back to the inner perimeter. Nghiem sets off hidden explosives which kill the spies, but soon dies afterwards after being hit by a mortar.
Due to the intense attack, Kirby orders a retreat from the camp, and U.S. helicopters arrive to evacuate the refugees. Petersen puts Ham Chuck on one and promises to return for him in Da Nang. With the base in enemy hands, Kirby requests an airstrike by an AC-47 gunship, callsign Puff the Magic Dragon, which annihilates the Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese Army regulars within Camp A-107. With the enemy having taken major casualties, Kirby and his team re-occupy the destroyed camp.
Beckworth tells Kirby he will file a story supporting U.S. involvement in the war and returns to Da Nang. Back at headquarters, Kirby meets with his superior, Colonel Morgan, and his South Vietnamese counterpart, Colonel Cai. They tell him about a top secret mission to capture North Vietnamese General Pha Son Ti, allowing them to end the war on South Vietnamese terms, as well as disrupting enemy leadership. Colonel Cai uses his sister-in-law Lin, a fashion model, as a honey trap to lure General Ti to a former French colonial mansion in a well-guarded valley in North Vietnam.
Among those Cai selects (and accompanies) are Kirby, Muldoon, and Petersen. Muldoon, T/Sgt. "Doc" McGee, and two of Cai's men stay behind at a bridge over a river to set explosives to blow it up to stop pursuit by the enemy forces, while Kirby and the rest of the team head towards the plantation. After eliminating the plantation's guards, the group subdue Ti with Lin's help, and put him in the trunk of his car. Kirby, Cai, Petersen, Sgt. Watson, and Lin drive away, but the rest of the team is killed by the guards while attempting to escape.
At dawn, the survivors cross the bridge; it is destroyed, but McGee is seriously wounded as he and Muldoon escape, while the others airlift Ti out of the area by a Skyhook device. While Kirby and the team advance through the jungle to their extraction point, Petersen is killed by a booby-trap, and the others are forced to leave his body behind.
At Da Nang, Beckworth watches as Ham Chuck runs from helicopter to helicopter, desperately searching for Petersen. Eventually, Kirby tells him of Petersen's death and comforts him, before the two walk along the beach into the sunset.
Cast
The film was notable in its casting of George Takei, who was then a regular cast member on the series Star Trek. As a result of Takei joining the film's cast, he missed filming nearly a third of the episodes of Star Trek season 2. His lines were subsequently rewritten for the character of Pavel Chekov, played by actor Walter Koenig. Koenig, who was originally cast as a rarely speaking background character, grew into one of the major Star Trek leads due to Takei's absence, leading to Chekov becoming a regular character in both the original series and subsequent films.Stowe, D. (2023, January 11). The Reason Star Trek Added Chekov In TOS Season 2. Retrieved from ScreenRant.com: https://screenrant.com/star-trek-tos-chekov-reason-joined-season-2/
Production Pre-production Columbia Pictures, having bought the book's pre-publication film rights, was not able to produce a script that the Army would approve, while producer David L. Wolper, who also tried to buy the same rights, could not obtain financing to make the movie.. A screenplay was written by George Goodman who had served with the Special Forces in the 1950s as a military intelligence officer and had written a 1961 article about the Special Forces called The Unconventional Warriors in Esquire magazine. Columbia sent Goodman to South Vietnam for research. Robin Moore felt the Pentagon pressured Wolper into breaking an agreement with Moore. Wolper acquired the rights to film The Devil's Brigade, an account of the World War II 1st Special Service Force, in 1965 and produced that film instead.
The final film's origins began in June 1966 with a trip by John Wayne to South Vietnam, and his subsequent decision to produce a film about the Army special forces deployed there as a tribute to them. Wayne was a steadfast supporter of American involvement in the war in Vietnam. He co-directed the film, and turned down the "Major Reisman" role in The Dirty Dozen to do so.
Screenplay Although The Green Berets portrays the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army as sadistic tyrants, it also depicts them as a capable and highly motivated enemy. The film shows the war as one with no front lines, meaning that the enemy can show up and attack at almost any position, anywhere. It shows the sophisticated spy ring of the VC and NVA that provided information about their adversaries. Like A Yank in Viet-Nam, it gave a positive view of South Vietnam and their anti-communist allies.
The US Army had objections to James Lee Barrett's initial script. The first was that the Army wanted to show that South Vietnamese soldiers were involved in defending the base camp. That was rectified. The Army also objected to the portrayal of the raid where they kidnap a NVA general because in the original script this involved crossing the border into North Vietnam. Robin Moore has stated that while all of the other stories in his book are roman à clefs of actual Special Forces missions and incidents, the mission to capture General Ti was completely fictitious.Moore, Robin. The Green Berets (New York: Crown Publishing), 1965.
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 was heavily criticized for having too much dialogue. Scenes shot with Vera Miles as the wife of Wayne's character were jettisoned. (However, Miles was again cast as the Duke's wife in Wayne's next film Hellfighters).p. 293 Munn, Michael John Wayne: The Man Behind the Myth Robson, 2004
Filming Wayne wrote a letter to President Johnson requesting military assistance in the production of the film, stating that he thought "it is extremely important that not only the people of the United States, but those all over the world, should know why it is necessary for us to be [in Vietnam]", and that a motion picture would serve this purpose, "Some day soon a motion picture will be made about Vietnam. Let’s make sure it is the kind of picture that will help our cause throughout the world". After reading the script and suggesting changes which were subsequently made, the Department of Defense decided to aid in the film's production.
Much of the film was shot in the summer of 1967 (before the Tet Offensive) at Fort Benning, Georgia. Department of Defense cooperation with the film was extensive, with the United States Army providing several UH-1 Huey attack helicopters and a C-7 Caribou light transport. The United States Air Force supplied two C-130 Hercules transports and two A-1 Skyraider attack aircraft as well as film footage of an AC-47 Puff the Magic Dragon gunship and an HC-130 Hercules employing the Skyhook Fulton recovery system for use in the film. The Army also provided authentic uniforms for use by the actors, including the OG-107 green and "Tiger Stripe" tropical combat uniform (jungle fatigues), with correct Vietnam War subdued insignia and name tapes.
John F. Schultz played pivotal roles as an extra as a U.S. soldier and a North Vietnamese Regular. He said of John Wayne, "At lunch, the producers were going to feed us peons hamburgers and hotdogs while the main characters ate steak. John Wayne said '...we all get steak or nobody does.'
Colonel Lamar Asbury "Bill" Welch, the actual commander of the United States Army Airborne School at Fort Benning in 1967, makes a brief cameo Skeet Shooting with John Wayne. Welch wears a 1960s US Army Fatigue Baseball Cap (common issue during the Vietnam War) in the scene while the actors wear green berets. Soldiers exercising on the drill field – that Wayne shouts to – were actual Army airborne recruits in training.