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26 FEBRUARY 2016
writer-director was now ready to begin filming.
However, the ideological battle raging at MGM
during the summer of 1950 was now directly
affecting Huston’s ability to concentrate on
making his Civil War picture. He firmly believed
his film was being held hostage in a power
struggle between Louis B. Mayer and Dore
Schary. Huston did not trust Mayer but thought it
prudent to confront him face-to-face in an
attempt to get a clear way forward for his
movie. A meeting was arranged between
the director and the movie mogul.
“L.B., if my picture is causing
problems I’ll drop the whole project
and set up another,” said Huston. “John
Huston, I’m ashamed of you,” roared
Mayer. “Do you believe in this picture?”
Huston nodded. “Then stick to your guns
and never let me hear you talk like this
again”. But over the coming months,
Huston’s distrust of Mayer would be well
founded.
Huston had requested the services of the
cinematographer who had filmed his last motion
picture, The Asphalt Jungle (1950). Harold
Rosson’s photography had already garnered him
five Academy Award nominations including one
for The Wizard of Oz (1939). In the early 1930s,
he had filmed a number of movies starring the
original blonde bombshell, Jean
Harlow, and his exquisite and
imaginative lighting of the actress
proved instrumental in her acsent
to stardom. (Rosson fell in love
with Harlow and became her first
husband; the marriage lasted a
mere six months.)
Huston showed Rosson a
book of photographs by Matthew
Brady (Brady had been the
first to undertake photographic
documentation of the American
Civil War). “I want the look of the
film to resemble Brady’s bleached
wet plate photography,” explained
Huston. Rosson flipped through the book of old
photographs and then simply replied, “OK, John”.
Between them, Huston and Rosson would
create a motion picture of incredible atmosphere,
with vivid contrast between the chaotic, smoke-
filled battle scenes and the quiet, almost idyllic,
interludes between the skirmishes. In fact, this
was a movie that under different circumstances
could quite possibly have been recognised today
as a cinematic masterpiece.
Location filming of the battle scenes was shot
at Huston’s ranch and interiors on the MGM
backlot. The director had invited Lillian Ross,
a journalist for The New Yorker magazine, to
come to Hollywood and observe him making “a
great artistic picture that will also make money”.
J ohn Huston’s script adaptation of The
Red Badge of Courage followed author
Stephen Crane’s narrative practically to
the letter.
The excitement and false bravado of young
enlisted men marching to the sound of the guns
quickly dissolves into a nightmare of fear and
terror with their first real taste of combat.
The young introspective Union soldier, Henry
Fleming (portrayed in the film by Audie Murphy),
controls his fear and anxieties when he and his
regiment repel the initial Confederate attack. But
when the yelling enemy charge for the second
time, the chaos of battle proves too much for
him. Unable to summon the courage again, he
throws down his rifle and runs to the rear.
Wandering through the woods, the youth,
plagued with shame and guilt, is knocked
unconscious with a rifle butt from another
retreating Union soldier. When he awakens, he
struggles back to his unit and tells his comrades
that the wound to his head (his red badge of
courage) was received during the fight.
Now lauded as a wound-carrying veteran,
when the regiment returns to the battlefield,
young Henry suddenly finds the courage he
thought had forsaken him. Leading the charge,
he carries the regimental colours into the
Confederate trenches, triumphant over both his
enemy and his fear.
All of this was realistically transformed into
Huston’s script, and with his cast in place, the
One of the realistic battle scenes from RBoC
Director John Huston and
cinematographer Harold
Rosson filming a sequence
from The Red Badge of
Courage, September, 1950