The Longest Day

Introduction and comments following The Longest Day, 1962, with TCMs Ben Mankiewicz and Guest Programmer U.S.M.C. veteran Sean Adams.

Ben Mankiewicz introduces The Longest Day, 1962.

Guest host Madeleine Stowe introduces The Longest Day, 1962.

TCM's Dave Karger introduces The Longest Day, 1962.

Ben Mankiewicz introduces The Longest Day, 1962.

Introduction and comments following The Longest Day, 1962, with TCM's Ben Mankiewicz and Rob Citino, PhD.

Robert Ryan as (the real) Gen. Gavin seems to be loving this bit with the flashlight, then Jack Hedley as an RAF officer briefing the men on a (real!) tactical gag, then John Wayne again as Col. Vandevoort (also a real person) with another (factual!) gimmick, and grim appraisal, building toward the event in Darryl F. Zanuck’s D-Day behemoth The Longest Day, 1962.

In an airplane hangar in England converted to barracks, we’ve just met Red Buttons as American G.I. Steele and Richard Beymer as Schultz, having something of a personal reckoning, observed by buddy Martini (Sal Mineo), awaiting D-Day, in producer Darryl F. Zanuck’s The Longest Day. 1962.

Opening and scene-setting for producer Darryl F. Zanuck, hard to say which of his directors (Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki) might be working here, the first introduced characters are Paul Hartmann as a German officer, and Zanuck’s paramour Irina Demick as a French partisan, in the expansive D-Day epic The Longest Day. 1962.

First appearance of Rod Steiger as a fictional American navy destroyer commander, joining in the overnight assault in the early hours of June 6 , 1944, then on the deck Jeffrey Hunter as fictional Fuller, Joseph Lowe as “Sparrow,” Peter Helm as Mac, more anecdotes as producer Darryl F. Zanuck builds toward the D-Day invasion, in The Longest Day, 1962.

An all-star cast including John Wayne and Henry Fonda in a re-creation of the D-Day invasion on The Longest Day (1962).

First appearance for Richard Burton of course as the solitary Brit flyer entering the HQ tavern, just managing a joke about the brew when he’s approached by fellow Donald Houston, and shares word of a lost colleague, beginning another story-line, in producer Darryl F. Zanuck’s D-Day epic The Longest Day, 1962.

Peter Lawford as Lovat, (Scottish-born British aristocrat Simon Christopher Joseph Fraser, a real person) minimizing his oratory en route to the D-Day invasion, then Edmond O’Brien as Gen. Barton, and Henry Fonda (then 56, the same age as his character) finally appearing 90 minutes into the picture as Gen. Teddy Roosevelt Jr., dramatizing a famous actual event, in The Longest Day, 1962.