Originally Posted by
jimsumner
An interesting movie. In the 1950s and a good chunk of the 1960s, before Vietnam made us cynics about all things military, Hollywood made a lot of big-budget WWII movies, hitting many of the most pivotal moments, Pearl Harbor, the Doolittle Raid (psychologically big), Midway, Ardennes Forest, Market Garden, Remagen, many more, along with Guns of Navarone, Bridge Over the River Kwai and others less well-known and/or fictional.
History 101 at your local theater.
And The Longest Day certainly had about as many big-name stars as any one movie could handle; Henry Fonda, John Wayne, Richard Burton, Robert Mitchum, Peter Lawford, Eddie Albert (a real-life Marine in the Pacific Theater), Sean Connery, Robert Wagner, a bunch of teenage heartthrobs et. al. They even found a way to get a few women into action.
But the movie is in black and white. A big-budget, Hollywood blockbuster in black and white in 1962? What were they thinking?