Cast a Giant Shadow Opened March 30, 1966

Based on the life of Colonel Mickey Marcus, the biopic stars Kirk Douglas, Senta Berger, Yul Brynner, John Wayne, Frank Sinatra and Angie Dickinson.

Cast a Giant Shadow follows the esteemed U.S. Army Col. David Marcus (Kirk Douglas) after the Israelis enlist him in the mission of preparing their nation against a war with the Arabs.

However, the task is much more difficult than he could ever imagine. David ultimately doesn’t see eye-to-eye with the local leaders, resulting in him leaving to retreat back home to be with his pregnant wife (Angie Dickinson) in America. He faces an incredibly difficult situation when he decides to return to help the Israelis form an army.

Melville Shavelson adapted, produced and directed the film, a fictionalized account of the experiences of a real-life Jewish-American military officer, Colonel David “Mickey” Marcus, who commanded units of the fledgling Israel Defense Forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Marcus is an Army Reserve Colonel in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, who was recently released from active duty and is now working in New York. He is approached by a Haganah agent, Major Safir, who requests his assistance in preparing Israeli troops to defend the newly declared State against its Arab neighbors.

Marcus is refused permission by The Pentagon to go, unless he travels as a civilian. The Haganah gives him a false passport with the alias “Michael Stone.” He arrives in Israel to be met by a Haganah member, Magda Simon.

Marcus, who parachuted into occupied France during WWII and helped to organize the relief mission for one of the first Nazi concentration camps liberated by American troops, is initially viewed with suspicion by some Haganah soldiers.

But after he leads a commando raid on an Arab arms dump and assists in a landing of illegal refugees, he is more accepted. After preparing training manuals for the troops, he returns to New York, where his wife has suffered a miscarriage.

Despite his wife’s pleadings, he returns to Israel and is given command of the Jerusalem front with the rank of General, a rank not used since biblical days.

He sets to work, recognizing that, while the men under his command do not have proper training or weapons, they do have spirit and determination.

He organizes the construction of the “Burma Road”, bypassing Latrun, to enable convoys to reach besieged Jerusalem, where the population is on the verge of starvation.

Many of the soldiers under his command are newly arrived in Israel, determined and enthusiastic but untrained. Dubbing them ‘the schnooks,’ Marcus is inspired by them to discover that he is proud to be a Jew.

But, just before the convoy of trucks to Jerusalem begins, he is shot and killed by a lone sentry who does not speak English, the last casualty before the UN impose a truce.

His coffin containing his body is carried down the “Burma Road” by honor guard of the soldiers he trained and inspired.

Cast

John Wayne as ‘the General’, Marcus’s commanding officer in the Second World War and now a senior general officer at the Pentagon, who initially refused him permission to go, but later supports him.

Yul Brynner as Asher, a Haganah commander.

Frank Sinatra as Vince Talmadge, an expatriate American pilot who takes part in what becomes a suicide mission to bomb Arab positions.