The Glory Guys

Though a fictionalized Western based on George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry Regiment at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the film is almost a generic war story covering the enlistment, training, and operational deployment of a group of recruits that could take place in any time period. The main plot follows two cavalry soldiers under the command of a tough general who fight Plains Indians and fall for the same woman.

Arnold Laven hired Sam Peckinpah to write the script in 1956 after having been impressed by some of Peckinpah's scripts for Gunsmoke. Although it took a number of years for Laven to raise finance for the movie, the quality of the script led to Laven working with Peckinpah in television.[2]

Peckinpah later called the film "a total disaster because of the casting. All the people in the picture were good. That is, they’ve all been good in other pictures but they didn’t really belong in that one. It was a wretched film. And one of the reasons I’ve made up my mind not to write any more. But I was on the street. I had to write."[3]

The film was known as Custer's Last Stand. When 20th Century Fox announced they would make The Day Custer Fell they were worried about competing with a big budget film so they changed the script and made all the characters fictitious.[1] Sam Peckinpah, fresh from making Major Dundee (1965), was considered to direct the film, but he was passed over in favor of Arnold Laven.

The large-scale film was made in Durango, Mexico, with large numbers of mounted extras and the final battle scene choreographed on 20,000 acres (81 km²) of land.[4]

The titles were drawn by Joseph Mugnaini for Format Productions. Cover version's of the title song were done by Al Caiola and sung by Frankie Laine.

• Tom Tryon as Capt. Demas Harrod
• Harve Presnell as Scout Sol Rogers
• Senta Berger as Lou Woddard
• Michael Anderson Jr. as Trp. Martin Hale
• James Caan as Trp. Anthony Dugan
• Slim Pickens as Sgt. James Gregory
• Erik Holland as Trp. Clark Gentry
• Adam Williams as Trp. Lucas Crain
• Andrew Duggan as Gen. Frederick McCabe
• Peter Breck as Lt. Bunny Hodges
• Laurel Goodwin as Beth Poole
• Jeanne Cooper as Mrs. Rachael McCabe
• Robert McQueeney as Maj. Oliver Marcus
• Wayne Rogers as Lt. Mike Moran
• Michael Forest as Fred Cushman
• Claudio Brook as Rev. Poole (scenes deleted)

Filmink magazine said the film was "an attempt to do a John Ford Western, specifically Fort Apache... with Caan playing, of all things, the Victor McLaglen role as an Irish sergeant, when he clearly should have had the lead instead of Tom Tryon" adding if Peckinpah had "directed, this film would be famous and most probably good instead of being forgotten, like all Arnold Laven movies."[5]

• List of American films of 1965

• The Glory Guys at IMDb