The 95 minute Version!!!


“Red Badge Of Courage” was a film destined to fail from its inception. Louis B. Mayer never wanted the picture to be made and did what he could to discourage the process. He felt it could never be a commercial success without female characters or established stars. Mayer expressed his views directly to John Huston, he said, “It has no story and won’t make a cent!”

When the film was finally completed, the test screenings were a failure. Houston remarked: "With the Red Badge of Courage, I quite understood at the time why they took the steps they did. I was present at a preview when damn near a third of the audience got up and walked out of the theatre.”

Various edits were tried without the participation of Huston, who was working on the “African Queen” with Bogart and Hepburn, and seemed to not give a damn. All that resulted was a picture that got shorter and shorter. The final release version is 69 minutes. The original cut was of 95 minutes, not two hours as has been suggested.

“...they cut out one scene that was probably the best in the picture, in a way of anticlimax. The monumental death of the tall soldier. The boy and the tattered soldier walk away down the hill, and the tattered fellow says, "I’ve never seen a feller die like that." He begins to ramble and begins to walk around in circles then dies himself. This was the most extraordinary moment in the picture as far as I was concerned. It wouldn’t have made any difference so far as the audience was concerned. They still walked out in the middle of the picture.”

The footage that was extracted was from the master negative. It was discarded to the floor of the editing suite and thrown away as useless. There are no records of any of the cut scenes or extra footage surviving.

Louis B. Mayer dispatched a second unit to Huston’s ranch. The second unit was to film the battle scenes in Technicolor using the Cinematographic process: MGM Camera 65. Louis B. Mayer, at his most vindictive, shot footage that would eventually be used in future productions with the full knowledge of Huston.

As the problems mounted, Huston’s enthusiasm for the project waned and he started to gravitate towards his next project. Huston never re-visited “Red Badge Of Courage”. It is assumed he was never happy with the film in its original form or its release version and was happy for the film to fade into annals of film history.

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Huston must have really lost interest in the picture, since the Tall Soldier's death scene made it into the initial release, and remains in the film as we know it today.

MGM Camera 65 was a widescreen anamorphic process Metro first trotted out in the late 1950s for big-ass pictures like 'Raintree County' and 'Ben-Hur'. No such process existed at MGM at the time 'The Red Badge of Courage' was produced.

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[deleted]

It's sad that so many would walk out of such a fine picture. Quite incredible cinematography. As well as acting and action sequences. One of the best. It would be nice to have the rest.

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They must've held previews in front of brain-dead bobbysoxers at Saturday matinees. Why not preview it on the USC and UCLA campuses? Or gather groups of libarrians and high school teachers? Maybe that kind of thinking was too far out of the box for 1951.
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