Battleground
Battleground is a 1949 American war film directed by William A. Wellman and starring Van Johnson, John Hodiak, Ricardo Montalbán, George Murphy, and James Whitmore. It follows a fictional company of the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division as they fight in the siege of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, in World War II. The screenplay was written by Robert Pirosh, based on his own experiences during the battle.
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| Written by | Robert Pirosh
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 screenplay by
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story by
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based on
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narrated by
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| Edited by | John D. Dunning
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animation by
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layouts by
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backgrounds by
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color process
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production company
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| Running time | 118 minutes
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| Country | United States
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| Language | English
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| Budget | $1,631,000
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| Box office | $6,269,000
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Soldier: Look, you're not selling it to me, you're showing me how to fire it.
- Screenwriter Robert Pirosh based this story on his experiences as an infantryman during the Battle of the Bulge. Pirosh did not serve with the 101st Airborne and wanted to create a script that was faithful to their experiences. He used his first hand knowledge of the battle of write the script. This was done with the blessing of General McAuliffe, who was commanding the 101st during Bastogne. Consequently many of the incidents in the film - such as Pvt. Kippton's habit of always losing his false teeth, or the Mexican soldier from Los Angeles who had never seen snow until he got to Belgium - that have always been derided as "typical Hollywood phony baloney" actually happened.
- Douglas Fowley, who plays Pvt. Kippton (he of the continually lost false teeth) served in the Navy in the South Pacific in World War II and lost all his own teeth in an explosion aboard his aircraft carrier during battle.
- James Whitmore took over the role of Sgt. Kinnie after James Mitchell was fired for moving too much like a dancer and not enough like a drill sergeant.
- 20 veterans of the 101st Airborne who fought in the Bastogne area were hired to train the actors and were also used as extras.
- Producer Dore Schary had been recruited to rejoin MGM following his successful run at RKO. This was one of the projects (and one that RKO boss Howard Hughes had rejected) that Schary insisted on making as part of his employment at MGM, over the protestations of MGM head Louis B. Mayer who believed that movie audiences had had their fill of war in general and war films in particular. Schary got his way. The movie was such a box office hit that within months he was elected to the board at MGM and MGM-parent Loew's Inc. chief Nick Schenck would fire Mayer by the summer of 1951.
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