Trivia / They Were Expendable

• Backed by the Pentagon: The Navy supplied actual PT boats to the company and Navy officers would stop by occasionally to watch the filming.
• California Doubling: The filming location was Key Biscayne, Florida, with a lot of design and set work giving it a passable resemblance to the Philippines.
• Cast the Expert: Robert Montgomery commanded a PT boat in real life, and also acted as a technical adviser during production.
• Creator Backlash: Lindsay Anderson tells the following anecdote in his biography of John Ford: when he interviewed Ford in 1950, the latter admitted he did not like the film...and actually never saw the finished movie! He disliked everything: project, shooting, editing without his supervision, music added without his consent, etc. Anderson was surprised because he thought it was a good movie, so Ford told him he might watch it after all... A few weeks later, Anderson received the following telegram that he kept as a relic: "Saw 'They Were Expendable'. You were right. Ford."
• Dawson Casting: John Wayne pushing 40 playing Rusty Ryan in his mid-20s.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • John Ford was angry about John Wayne staying at home making movies during the war, and rode him especially hard during the making of the film. At one point, Wayne was so fed up that he walked off the set, and it wasn't until Robert Montgomery forced Ford to apologize to him that things calmed down.
  • Montgomery, who, like many of the people involved in the production, had fought in the war, or been involved in some way, almost quit at the beginning of the film because he was uncomfortable getting back into acting. Ford told him he could go out on a boat for as long as he needed to, and when he was ready, they'd start filming. It took Montgomery only three days before he was able to come back and start filming.

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