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Major Dundee Overview:

Major Dundee (1965) was a Adventure - War Film directed by Sam Peckinpah and produced by Jerry Bresler.

Major Dundee BlogHub Articles:

Major Dundee (1965)

By Beatrice on Nov 18, 2018 From Flickers in Time

Major Dundee Directed by Sam Peckinpah Written by Harry Julian Fink, Oscar Saul and Sam Peckinpah 1965/USA Jerry Bresler Productions First viewing/Netflix rental Sam Peckinpah’s first major directing credit didn’t grab me. The film is set in the last months of the Civil War near the Te... Read full article

Major Dundee (1965) – Father’s Day Gift Guide

on May 21, 2013 From Journeys in Classic Film

Twilight Time is ambitious for putting out a critically excoriated (at the time) Sam Peckinpah film, but they have and I applaud the effort.  While I didn’t adore Major Dundee, and it wears its problems sewn into its sleeve, there’s something to admire in its scope and tenacity.  Conta... Read full article

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Major Dundee Quotes:

Aesop: [observing the French troops] My outfit could lick those boys - those ones on foot, anyway. With one hand tied behind our backs.
O.W. Hadley: How's that, Aesop?
Aesop: They're soft, O.W. - they ain't never been South.
Capt. Benjamin Tyreen: You don't have the temprament to be a liberator, Amos.
Samuel Potts: Bannon was a soldier, Amos. It goes with the pretty girls and the pension.
O.W. Hadley: [as he is about to be executed as a deserter] Aw, hell, Major, you're just doin' what you gots to do! But goddamn your soul for it anyway, and God bless Robert E. Lee!
[Tyreen shoots him in the back of the head]
Capt. Benjamin Tyreen: [to Dundee] Now, I have orders to take you out of here in a way that befits your character - out the back door!
[punches Dundee]
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Major Dundee Facts
The script was originally written with John Ford in mind to direct, but Ford was busy working on Cheyenne Autumn and in any case was uninterested.
Woody Strode was considered for the part that went to Brock Peters. Strode was part Native American and he wrote in his memoirs that he didn't get the part because he was told by Sam Peckinpah that he looked too much "like a half-breed" to play the part.
Average Shot Length (ASL) = 4.7 seconds
Sam Peckinpah originally wanted Lucien Ballard, with whom he had had a good working relationship on Ride the High Country, as the director of photography, but producer Jerry Bresler refused the request, making him work with Sam Leavitt, whose credits included Diamond Head, a previous Bresler production, and Cape Fear. Although Leavitt did get along fairly well with Peckinpah, this was the first sign of tension between the director and the producer.
According to both Paul Seydor's book PECKINPAH: THE WESTERN FILMS, A RECONSIDERATION, and David Weddle's book IF THEY MOVE, KILL 'EM, MAJOR DUNDEE was originally budgeted at $4.5 million and scheduled for seventy-five days of principal photography, which was appropriate for a road-show release. But only two days before Sam Peckinpah, his cast and crew were to star filming in Mexico, a change in the top brass at Columbia occurred, and the new regime cut the budget down by $1.5 million, and the schedule down by fifteen days, making it a standard western release. As could be expected, Peckinpah considered this an act of extreme betrayal.
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