Battle of the Bulge - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Battle of the Bulge or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Battle of the Bulge

[manuel]

Some scenes were filmed on the crumbling sets of Samuel Bronston's The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964).

[gabriel]

Entirely shot in Spain which doesn't share much in the way of physical similarities with the snowy forests of Ardennes in Belgium.

[brent]

Dino De Laurentiis apparently helped produce, but is uncredited.

[tamara]

The version of the film released on DVD contains approximately 1196 shots in 9397 seconds of action. This equates to an average shot length of about 7.9 seconds.

[edgar]

Premiered at the Pacific Cinerama Dome Theatre in Hollywood on December 16 1965, the 21st anniversary of the battle.

[wesley]

German King Tiger tanks in this movie are actually American M47 Patton tanks, and the M4 Sherman tanks are actually M24 Chaffee tanks.

[sara]

The climatic scene has Americans using burning fuel as a roadblock against approaching German panzers. A similar incident happened during the Battle of the Bulge. The 5th Belgian Fusilier Battalion guarded a fuel depot near Stavelot, Belgium that stretched for 1/4 of a mile. When a German column approached the depot, the Belgians set fire to the depot by poking holes in the barrels with bayonets and rolling them onto the road before setting it on fire with tracers and matches. The Germans couldn't advance through the flames and couldn't go around because of the steep grades on the the sides of the road and were forced to retreat.

[tammy]

A documentary that outlines a more factual and non-fictionalized account of the Battle of the Bulge entitled The Battle of the Bulge... The Brave Rifles (1965) was made and released a year after this film.

[norma]

Robert Shaw earned $350,000 for his role as the German Panzer commander, more than he had earned in his entire career up to that point. That amount, after adjusting for inflation, would be equivalent to $2.6 million in 2015.

[steve]

The small tank models on the German HQ's map board are HO scale (1/87) Roco Minitanks, made in Austria. The German Bundeswehr actually used these little models in manoeuvre wargames, but the firm was only founded in 1960 and they were therefore obviously not used in WW2. The small German tank models are real King Tigers, not the US M47 used in the battle scenes or depicted by the large model in the HQ.

[victoria]

An article dated December 2, 1965, and circulated by "The Washington Post" said that Dwight D. Eisenhower was "outraged" by this Warner Brothers movie. It said that Columbia Pictures had long had an epic movie in the works about the battle that had the cooperation of the Defense Department, as well as many of the generals who had been involved, including Eisenhower and Bernard L. Montgomery. The working title of Columbia's movie was "16th of December:The Battle of the Bulge." Michael Anderson was slated to direct from a screenplay written by Byron Morgan and Tony Lazzarino, and the project was to be co-produced by Lazzorino and Kenneth T. Hoeck. The former president's son John S.D. Eisenhower was writing a companion history of the battle and serving as technical advisor. Anderson was quoted as hoping to have Van Heflin as Eisenhower, David Niven as Montgomery, John Wayne as Gen. George S. Patton and Laurence Olivier as Adolf Hitler. Shortly after Columbia announced that filming would begin during the winter of 1964, Warner Brothers registered the title "The Battle of the Bulge" and announced that it was going to make its own fictional movie, upsetting the plans for Columbia's epic. Columbia obtained an injunction against Warners, dropping it after Warners agreed that its picture would not use the names of any of the real-life figures that had contributed to Columbia's project, such as Eisenhower, Montgomery, Omar Bradley, Anthony McAuliffe, Patton and 10 other figures. The Defense Department had also urged a Federal Trade Commission action against the movie on the grounds that its title was misleading the public. When the article appeared it stated that Columbia's project would go forward, with filming to begin at Camp Drum near Watertown, NY, in the fall of 1966, but the project fell through and the film was never made.

[mathew]

The character of the German colonel was first intended to be real-life Panzer officer Joachim Peiper, the youngest man in the German army to make the rank of full colonel (SS-Standartenführer, the direct SS equivalent to an oberst or full colonel in the German army). A protégé of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and the third most powerful man in Germany after Adolf Hitler, Peiper was promoted to the rank at the age of 29. However, as he was still living at the time the film was produced and was still a committed Nazi, his character was quickly changed to a fictitious officer in the regular German army, so as not to give him any connection to the film or risk a libel suit. It was Peiper's unit (Kampfgruppe Peiper) of the 1st SS Division, Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler that was responsible for the massacre of American POWs in Malmedy, Belgium, depicted--although inaccurately--in the film. After the war he was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted by the American Occupation Force because the trial had been fraught with illegalities, and Peiper wound up serving only 11 years in prison, despite having perpetrated war crimes on both the Eastern and Western fronts. He was assassinated at his home in France, likely by French communists, in 1976.

[ken]

Sergio Leone had wanted Charles Bronson for the Lee Van Cleef role in For a Few Dollars More (1965) but Bronson could not work around his commitment to this movie.