Trivia / Major Dundee

• Awesome, Dear Boy: Charlton Heston was eager to work with Sam Peckinpah, having been a big fan of his earlier film Ride the High Country. Ironically, Heston came to dislike working with Peckinpah during filming, later citing him as "The only person I've ever physically threatened on a set." Heston would later decline Peckinpah's offers to work with him again on later films such as the more successful and iconic The Wild Bunch (Heston turned down the William Holden role).
• Box Office Bomb: Budget: $3.8 million. Box office: $2.5 million.
• California Doubling: Averted. The movie was actually filmed in Mexico.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: The 1990s laserdisc released had a picture of Peter O'Toole on the front cover. He was not in the movie.
• Creator Backlash: Sam Peckinpah hated the score by veteran composer Daniele Amfitheatrof, who was brought in at the insistence of the studio, feeling it was too pompous and militaristic. A more tragic and bittersweet score composed from scratch by Christopher Caliendo replaced it in the 2005 re-release.
• The Danza: One of the strangest examples: Charlton Heston (whose real name was John Charles Carter) shares a middle name with character, Major Amos Charles Dundee.
• Dawson Casting: Then 37-year old Warren Oates played O.W. Hadley, who is referred to as a "boy" despite the fact that he's clearly anything but (he was actually two years older than Richard Harris, who played his Confederate commanding officer). Borders on Narm when he dies and everyone continually refers to him as a "boy" despite the fact that he was clearly in his late 30s.
• Deleted Role: Jody McCrea was cast as Lieutenant Brannin, commander of the patrol massacred by Sierra Charriba, but all his scenes were cut. Production notes list character actor Dennis Patrick as a character named "Captain Dallace" who is also not present in the finished movie.
• Doing It for the Art: Charlton Heston put up his salary in order to get the film finished and so that Sam Peckinpah wouldn't be fired.
• Dueling Movies: With The Glory Guys, another cavalry Western which, oddly, also sported a Sam Peckinpah script and several of the same actors (Senta Berger, Slim Pickens, Michael Anderson Jr.).
• Executive Meddling: A legendarily notorious example in the annals of Hollywood, studio heads at Columbia abruptly cut short the film's shooting schedule and kept reducing the running time from over four hours to 156 minutes, 136 minutes at its initial release, and finally 123 minutes. As might be expected, director Sam Peckinpah wasn't pleased with these changes. Supposedly The Wild Bunch was his attempt at a semi-remake. According to Charlton Heston the film suffered a lot of this (see What Could Have Been below). Among other problems Heston cited that Major Dundee began filming without a properly finished script and that none of the major parties involved had agreed on what the film was truly supposed to be: Heston said he saw the film as being about life after the Civil War, the studio just wanted a standard issue "Cavalry Vs. Indians" picture and Peckinpah, according to Heston, saw it as The Wild Bunch, which would become his most famous and iconic film a few years later.
• Fake American: British actor Michael Anderson Jr. as Trooper Ryan, but notably averted with Richard Harris, since Tyreen is specifically stated to be an Irishman who emigrated to America.
• Fake Nationality: Australian actor Michael Pate as Apache chief Sierra Charriba. The Swiss Mario Adorf plays the Mexican Sergeant Gomez.
• Friendship on the Set: Richard Harris and James Coburn got along very well and would often go out drinking together. Coburn recalled, "When he wanted to, he could hit the liquor like no one I knew."
• Hostility on the Set: Charlton Heston and Richard Harris didn't get on at all.
  • Harris accused Heston of being too strict, too serious and overbearing, while Heston accused Harris of being unprofessional, lazy and frequently drunk during filming. Harris described Heston as "as being so square, that he must have fallen from a cubic moon". Heston described Harris as "something of a fuck-up, no question".
  • Harris recalled that Heston was insistent on punctuality, clocking everyone with a stopwatch. As a prank, Harris positioned dozens of alarm clocks outside Heston's makeup trailer and set them all to go off at the same time. Heston was startled when he came out and Harris quipped, "Just clocking in". Heston was not amused.
  • Both of them argued with Sam Peckinpah. Eventually the director left the set and drove into the hills at night, declaring that he'd rather sleep with the scorpions than with his actors.
• Orphaned Reference: A few from Deleted Scenes that were either never shot or lost:
  • When Dundee and his men depart the fort, Waller says that he hopes Dundee will "have the pleasure" of being brought before General Carleton, their departmental commander,^note James Henry Carleton, commander of the "California Column" who defeated Sibley's New Mexico invasion and later waged a brutal campaign against the Navajo and Apache in New Mexico before he's able to reach Mexico. The script features a subplot where Waller, rather than merely protesting Dundee's actions, sends an aide to Carleton demanding his arrest for disobeying orders. This comes to a head during the expedition's crossing into Mexico, when Dundee narrowly escapes a Union patrol sent to arrest him, who are in turn scared off by a large contingent of Confederate troops. All that remains of the latter scene is a brief shot of the Confederates while Tyreen debates whether to cross the river or escape.
  • In one scene Sergeant Gomez acts as interpreter for the "Old Apache" who later leads Dundee into an ambush at the river. In the original script, Gomez mentions that he had been abducted and raised by Apaches as a child, but this scene is the only (oblique) reference to his backstory remaining in the final cut.
  • Teresa jokingly asks Dundee "Are you El Tigre, the tiger that prowls these mountains?" In the original script, Sierra Charibba gave a lengthy speech to the dying Lieutenant Brannin where he referred to himself as "the Tiger"; Teresa's line was meant to reinforce the connection Charibba and Dundee.
• Romance on the Set: Sam Peckinpah fell for actress Begoña Palacios (who played Linda, the young Mexican woman who Ryan falls in love with) and spent much of his time courting her rather than directing. They eventually married.
• Screwed by the Network: It began before filming even started, when a new group of executives took over at Columbia and slashed the film's budget and schedule. After a troubled shoot, the film was taken out of Peckinpah's hands before certain crucial scenes could be filmed, and released with a score he didn't like and missing some key character-focused footage. A 2005 recut of the film provided a new score and restored what lost footage could be found.
• Scully Box: While he was not a short man by any means - he stood a little over 6-foot even - Richard Harris was not happy to learn that he would be standing next to considerably taller men (Charlton Heston, James Coburn, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens and R.G. Armstrong all stood around 6'2" or 6'3" while Jim Hutton stood 6'5"), so Harris jacked up his boots so he would appear taller (see below).
• Troubled Production: Charlton Heston was impressed with Harry Julian Fink's story outline and Sam Peckinpah's directorial work on Ride the High Country, which set this film into motion. The first minor hint of trouble came when Fink turned in a 163-page screenplay draft that only covered the first third of his storyline.^note With the usual rule of thumb being that one screenplay page equals one minute of film, at that rate Fink would've finished with about eight hours worth of script Sam Peckinpah then reworked the script from a basic Western adventure story to a Moby-Dick-esque study of the title character, a US Cavalry officer who would do anything for glory. Everyone who read the final version thought he had another masterpiece in the pipeline. Filming began in Mexico.
  • And that's where things began to fall apart. Columbia kept changing things—the shooting schedule, the budget, the film's final running time — much to Peckinpah's chagrin. To accommodate the changes, the script was again rewritten, this time by Oscar Saul; it was still being reworked throughout filming, which accounts in part for the finished film's choppiness. One of the more egregious additions was the romance plot with Senta Berger's Teresa. (Some idea of what Fink and Peckinpah's original script looked like can be gleaned from a novelization published in 1965, which adds several scenes and whole subplots, while changing the fates of several characters. The romance is completely absent.)
  • So Peckinpah started drinking. Heavily, even by his standards. And then showing up this way on set. He began firing people for the most insignificant things, and threatening everyone else to the point that Heston frequently had to pull his costume's cavalry sabre on the director repeatedly. Peckinpah fell for actress Begonia Palacios, who played a minor character in the film,note and spent much of his time courting her rather than directing.
  • It didn't help either that Heston and costar Richard Harris hated each other. They'd worked together previously, on The Wreck Of The Mary Deare, and their antipathy carried over into Dundee: Heston called Harris a "professional Irishman" while Harris labeled Heston a "holy Joe." Senta Berger recounted the two engaging in macho posturing, like Harris hiking his boots up to seem taller than Heston. Heston was so annoyed by Harris's general behavior (he frequently showed up late on set, and argued with Peckinpah and his costars) that he lodged a formal complaint with producer Jerry Bresler.
  • Word of this got back to the studio, which aggravated matters by moving the wrap date up a full month. They were reportedly going to fire Peckinpah as well until Heston saved his friend's job by making the ultimate sacrifice—he said he would forego his salary and do the whole film for free. Even so, Peckinpah's drinking got even worse. This time he often wandered away from the set, and Heston reportedly directed much of the later scenes.
  • When principal photography was finally over, Columbia broke its contract with Peckinpah and hired editors itself to put the film together. The film was cut from a reported 155 minute run time to 121 minutes, with a poorly-matched musical score by Daniele Amfitheatrof (featuring a title march by Mitch Miller and his Sing-Along Gang) added. Critics regarded the finished film as an interesting failure; however, stories of Peckinpah's difficult behavior percolated throughout Hollywood. He was fired from his next film, The Cincinnati Kid, and spent several years blackballed by Hollywood studios.
  • Peckinpah eventually recouped his reputation with a TV production of Noon Wine, then made The Wild Bunch, which is sort of a semi-remake of this film. For years there was a debate as to how much the released version represented what Peckinpah had really wanted to do, and only in 2005, two decades after his death, was a version released that tried to be true to his original vision. This version runs 138 minutes, 17 minutes longer than the original studio cut, and adds a new sound mix and a completely new score by Christopher Caliendo.
• Wag the Director: Charlton Heston and Richard Harris both argued with Sam Peckinpah. Eventually, the director left the set and drove into the hills at night, declaring that he'd rather sleep with the scorpions that with his actors. The normally mild-mannered Heston was so enraged by Peckinpah's behaviour that he threatened to run him through with his cavalry sabre.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally started as an adaptation of Hoffman Birney's novel The Dice of God, a heavily fictionalized telling of Custer's Last Stand, until Peckinpah scrapped it and decided to adapt Harry Julian Fink's script instead. Peckinpah's Dice of God script was ultimately made into the film The Glory Guys without his participation, released the same year as Major Dundee.
  • Reportedly the film was originally intended to be four hours long, described as a kind of "Moby Dick In The Old West" with Dundee as Captain Ahab and the Apache as the collective whale, but countless scenes went un-filmed due to Executive Meddling.
  • John Ford was offered the chance to direct the film before Sam Peckinpah got involved, but he was busy with Cheyenne Autumn and at any rate he just wasn't interested.^note The two films also share an actor: Ben Johnson
  • Lee Marvin was Peckinpah's initial choice for the role of Samuel Potts, but he wanted too much money.
  • The role of Capt. Tyreen was intended for Anthony Quinn, who pulled out. Steve McQueen (actor) was also considered.
  • Woody Strode was considered for Aesop. Strode was part Native American and he wrote in his memoirs that he didn't get the part because he was told by Sam that he looked too much "like a half-breed" to play the part.
  • Omar Sharif was considered for Sgt. Gomez.
  • The original treatment written by Harry Julian Fink contained a great deal of violence and profanity, including the uses of "shit" and "fuck", which would have been forbidden in any screenplay for a film made during the mid-'60s.
  • Columbia offered Peckinpah a chance to reedit the film after the success of The Wild Bunch. Peckinpah declined, claiming he was "too busy," though in reality he understandably had no interest in revisiting what had been an extremely bitter experience.
• Working Title: And Then Came the Tiger!

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