All the Young Men

All the Young Men (1960)

Spit out what's on your filthy little mind ... and then take your orders from me !

During the Korean War, the lieutenant in charge of a Marine rifle platoon is killed in battle. Before he dies, he places the platoon's sergeant, who's black, in charge. The sergeant figures on having trouble with two men in his platoon: a private who has much more combat experience than he does, and a racist Southerner who doesn't like blacks in the first place and has no intention of taking orders from one.

Date of release
1960-08-26
TMDB
6.7 / 10 (10)
Runtime
1h 23m
Genres
Action, Adventure, Drama, War
Director
Hall Bartlett

Casting

Interesting facts

All the Young Men is a 1960 American Korean War feature film directed by Hall Bartlett and starring Alan Ladd and Sidney Poitier dealing with desegregation in the United States Marine Corps. Poitier plays a sergeant unexpectedly placed in command of the survivors of a platoon in the Korean War. The film explores the racial integration of the American military, centering on the African-American sergeant's struggle to win the trust and respect of the men in his unit.

Production

Hall Bartlett designed the film as a vehicle for Sidney Poitier based on the integration of the military in the Korean War. Bartlett devised the original story with Gene Coon and wrote the script himself. He aimed to make the film independently, though the start date was dependent on Poitier's success in the play A Raisin in the Sun.

Columbia Pictures agreed to finance provided that Bartlett rewrite the script for a white costar. Bartlett found that the only major star willing take the role was Alan Ladd, who co-produced the film. Bartlett said:

I could have done it [the film] on a shoestring in some canyon in the Hollywood Hills, but I felt that now is the time for me to prove myself with a picture in the million-plus category. I realized that I could not stay in my ivory tower forever, making nice, small, critically praised films. You don't go very far here if you're not successful when the right time comes.

The film features an unusual cast; in addition to Ladd and Poitier, the cast includes comedian Mort Sahl, who does a comedy routine, James Darren, who sings the title song and boxer Ingemar Johansson in his American film debut. Bartlett cast his Argentine wife Ana María Lynch as a French Korean, Mario Alcalde as an American Indian, Hollywood-born Paul Richards as a bigoted Southerner and local Blackfoot Indians as North Koreans.

All the Young Men was filmed in Glacier National Park in Montana and at Mount Hood, Oregon. Poitier's commitment to the film forced him leave the run of the play A Raisin in the Sun early.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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