Hey you guys,
I am a sucker for the vintage promo clips for old movies. Beyond serving as fascinating time capsules they sometimes boast a sort of cracked poetry. This is especially true of a fascinating little featurette called Operation Dirty Dozen which can be found on the Dirty Dozen DVD. Against a backdrop of wiggy psychedelic rock and documentary footage of Lee Marvin, Telly Savalas and the rest of the gang looking hip and virile the way too smooth narrator sings the virtues of the film's "action guys" at work and play. I liked it so much that I transcribed the entire short and transformed it into a poem. Dig it!
Guys Of Action, Whirpool of Forgettance
This is Academy Award Winner Lee Marvin
An Action guy at work or play
Today it's work
17 miles north of London an unusually rugged group of actors
begin to shoot sequences for a new picture The Dirty Dozen
It is here that Lee Marvin will star as the leader of some of the toughest guys on or off a movie set
Physically the roughest.
Marvin and the other actors will master Judo and Commando techniques for killing quickly and silently.
Six days a week Lee Marvin is a moviemaker. On his day off he looks for another kind of action.
Marvin is a pleasure to work with, a real pro.
His enthusiasm is contagious.
He passes it on to others and puts them at ease.
London is switched on seven days a week.
The stars have time for only one of those days.
The others take a break on King's Row, the main stem of London's mod world.
Swinging London is an ideal setting for these men,
Action guys enjoying themselves on the town
The restless vitality of the city seems to charge their batteries
Jimmy Brown is a newcomer to the movies but he's very much at home with the other actors who make up the Dirty Dozen.
London sees the flames twenty miles away.
These men came to London to make a motion picture that moves.
They enjoy action.
It's part of their way of life.
The aches and pains they suffer, the risks they take, is a price they gladly pay. Ahead there are more locations, more tension and strain.
But that's how it goes for men of action.
That's how it goes for…The Movie Makers!
It turns out this short was part of an ongoing series called "The Moviemakers" written by Jay Anson, a writer best known for writing the novel that inspired The Amityville Horror. Writing the narration for a glorified commercial is a thankless task but gosh darn it if Anson doesn't put his stamp on every dynamic, action-packed turn of phrase. But then again that's just how it goes for…The Movie Makers!