Russ Meyer and The Dirty Dozen
The following is excerpted from a book “Darkness Visible: Memoir of a World War II Combat Photographer” by Charles Eugene Sumners, Ann Sumners – 2002:
The book The Dirty Dozen was written by E.M. Nathanson. This was a very well-written book that was later made into a movie starring Lee Marvin, Jim Brown and several other well-known actors. This was an excellent movie and can still be seen on reruns on television.
The original idea for the story came from Russ Meyer while he and Nathanson were sitting in a bar in Los Angeles one night. Russ told Nathanson about the time that Russ and I had gone to a stockade in England and spent a couple of days photographing there. The story in the book was either Meyer’s or Nathanson’s version of the affair but Meyer received ten thousand dollars for telling Nathanson the story of this stockade that led Nathanson to write his book.
There were many prisoners at this stockade at the time. Some were locked up in cells while others were on the grounds tossing a softball or just sitting around smoking and talking. It was a stockade with barbed wire across the top of the fence, and guards carried live ammunition.
We ate in the same mess hall with the prisoners, but well away from them at a table with the noncoms and the guards over in a corner. The thing that I remember most was that the prisoners were not allowed to talk in the mess hall, except to ask for salt to be passed if needed. So you see, it was almost total silence in the mess hall.
My memory was that there were some mean-looking men in that stockade, and I did not want to get too close to any of them. Those locked in isolation cells were only let out to exercise or eat chow. They ate at a separate table, and wore leg shackles at all times to prevent escape. I think the basis for the “selected dozen” came from Meyer’s description of these shackled men.
We slept in a hut that was located just outside the stockade where a corporal, a sergeant and some privates stayed. There was also a shack type of building where the commanding officer and the officers stayed. A colonel, a captain and a couple of lieutenants stayed there.
The prison was located in a rather remote area, so not a lot was going on around there. When Meyer finished filming, we were told that the colonel wanted the film. They not only took the film that was exposed, but also took the unexposed film that was in my musette bag as well. So, there was no record of this visit.
Nathanson wanted to tell the story and to shoot the movie as factual, but the army denied any knowledge of the stockade. They said it never happened and that there was no such place.
He called me from California on two or three occasions in 1962 asking me for details of this visit. While I was out in California visiting Meyer a few years ago, we had dinner with Nathanson, and he was still asking us questions about this subject. This event happened in 1944, so my memory was not too detailed, but I do know that we spent one night and two days at this stockade that the army denies existed, and we had shot film that was confiscated before we left.
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