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Moreover, Hollywood had used
the theme of civil war Southerners
and Northerners being forced by
circumstance to fight together as
a unit against marauding Indians in
several earlier movies.
Two Flags
West
(1950),
Escape from Fort Bravo
(1953) and
Revolt at Fort Laramie
(1957)
all had similar storylines to Bresler and
Heston’s proposed project. However,
none of them had been treated as a
blockbuster production with a $4.5
million budget. Bresler had every
intention of making this a big three-hour
roadshow movie, and when he sent the
story and offer to Peckinpah, he received
an immediate acceptance from the
director.
With his leading man and
director eager to start as soon as
possible, Bresler convened a meeting
where the three men discussed the key
elements of the story and interface
of the main characters. Peckinpah saw
Amos Dundee as a Custer-type glory
hunter driven by selfish ambition to
right a military mistake he had made
at the Battle of Gettysburg, which led
to him being relegated to the position of a
prison warden. He also tabled a suggestion that
the second-in-command, Confederate Captain
Benjamin Tyreen, be portrayed as Dundee’s alter
ego, together with a back story of the history
between them. As a former West Point classmate
and friend of Dundee, Tyreen had been cashiered
out of the Union army for killing a fellow officer in
a duel, and Dundee had cast the deciding vote at
the court martial. This would add extra tension to
their already polarised relationship.
Heston saw great potential in these scenarios,
which would allow him to portray a darker side to
the flawed and neurotic Dundee character.
regiment of French lancers.
The story is partially based on
historical fact; during the American
civil war many Southern prisoners volunteered
for duty fighting off Indian raids on the Western
frontier rather than face the squalid conditions
of a Federal prison camp. These Confederates
became known to history as “Galvanised
Yankees”.
visit
stack.net.auEXTRAS
24
jbhifi.com.auAPRIL
2016
A
fter producer Jerry Bresler had
privately run the film
Ride the
High Country
for actor Charlton
Heston, they both agreed that its
director, Sam Peckinpah, should be hired
to helm their new joint project.
Bresler had previously managed to
interest Heston in a somewhat sketchy,
40-page treatment written by Harry Julian
Fink titled
And Then Came the Tiger
(Fink
would later write the
Dirty Harry
screenplay).
Fink’s story takes place in the remote
New Mexico Territory during the last year
of the American civil war. The main
protagonist, Amos Dundee, a Federal
officer relegated to command a prisoner
of war camp, sets out to subdue a band
of renegade Apaches who have
massacred a detachment of his troopers,
a family of settlers, and abducted the
settlers' three young male children.
To enable him to
undertake this
independent expedition, Dundee
must supplement his meagre
federal force with civilian
volunteers and a motley crew of
paroled Confederate prisoners.
The vengeful Dundee leads his
undermanned company across
the Rio Grande into Mexico
which is embroiled in a
revolution. The Juaristas are
battling thousands of French
troops who have occupied their
country in support of the puppet emperor,
Maximilian. The French consider
Dundee’s incursion a violation of international law
and prepare to do battle with the American
invaders. Dundee’s rag-tag command must not
only fight the Apache, but also take on a whole
Major Dundee
(1965) Directed by
Sam Peckinpah
SettingUp the Production
Part 2:
Charlton Heston as Amos Dundee
Producer Jerry Bresler