Kelly's Heroes

**another ant** · 03-01-2014, 01:00 PM

I love the end when they have emptied the bank ,and arrive the general.
the mayor of village asked the sergeant ,if comes is Charles de Gaulle?
and sargeant says "de Gaulle? him have never been in this war.

**Scout** · 03-01-2014, 01:06 PM

Alberty never made it big - he mostly played supporting roles in the vein of his Kelly's Heroes character.

**Mark K** · 03-01-2014, 01:09 PM

I own it on DVD one of my favorite classics it can be found on a 4 DVD set rather cheap (ESSENTIAL EASTWOOD ACTION COLLECTION ) Were Eagles Dare,Kelley's Heroes,Firefox,Heart Break Ridge, think I only paid $9.00 Cdn for it off E-bay.
Carrol O'Connor's performance as the General always cracks me up I watched it as well a few night ago .

Regards Mark

**Adam M** · 03-01-2014, 01:10 PM

Great movie, one of the best

**CampX** · 03-01-2014, 03:10 PM

I remember a couple of years ago, on another forum, someone asked where they got the 3 running Tigers from!!!
I think this was the first movie that used T 34s as Tigers, something that is somewhat common now.
Also an American unit did steal a lot of gold at the end of the war and it was never recovered, for some reason I think it might have been the 10th Mountian Troops, however I cannot remember off hand, but I did read a book about it many years ago.

Dean O
Ajax Canada

**Scout** · 03-01-2014, 03:18 PM

by CampX

I remember a couple of years ago, on another forum, someone asked where they got the 3 running Tigers from!!!
I think this was the first movie that used T 34s as Tigers, something that is somewhat common now.
Also an American unit did steal a lot of gold at the end of the war and it was never recovered, for some reason I think it might have been the 10th Mountian Troops, however I cannot remember off hand, but I did read a book about it many years ago.

Dean O
Ajax Canada

Careful, or some 10th Mountain Division fellows might come knocking!

Quite capable division BTW. A fine combat record.

Some trivia from IMDB (I dont vouch for the validity of the info):

The gold;
Film is based upon a true incident. The caper was covered in a book called "Nazi Gold: The Sensational Story of the World's Greatest Robbery - and the Greatest Criminal Cover-Up" by Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting. The heist was perpetrated by a combinations of renegade Nazi and American officers. It was also listed as the "biggest" robbery ever in the Guinness Book of Records, in the 1960's.

The Tanks;
The "Tiger" tanks used in the film were actually Russian T-34 tanks which had been specially modified to look like Tiger tanks. This is apparent when you look at the suspension of the tanks (T-34s used a modified Christie suspension, whereas the Tigers' wheels were much more elaborate.)

The logistic problems;
A gold bar of 400 Troy ounces would measure roughly 2 inches x 3 inches x 9 inches and would weigh about 28 pounds. 14,000 bars at 28 pounds is 196 tons requiring a minimum of 78 two-and-a-half ton trucks to transport. The bar seen being handed around like it was a loaf of bread looks a bit larger, roughly 3 inches x 4 inches x 12 inches. A gold bar of this size weighs 75 pounds and 14,000 of these bars would weigh 523 tons requiring 209 trucks.

Stated value of gold;
The number of gold bars stated in the heist is 14,000. The initial value of the stolen bars was estimated at $1.6 million and then later corrected to be estimated at $16 million in total. The international standard weight for gold bars is 400 troy ounces and in 1944, the price of gold was $35 dollars per (troy) ounce. That would make approximated total value of the score to be closer to $196 million dollars; not $16 million dollars as stated.

**CampX** · 03-01-2014, 03:33 PM

Thank you, that was the book I read, I remember they only found one or 2 empty bags buried in a garden, from the photo shown of the bag in the book, I would have thought it held coins not bars, but as I mentioned, they only found 1 or 2 bags, who knows what else went missing.

Dean O
Ajax Canada

**davejb** · 03-02-2014, 04:44 AM

I had an actress friend who did a film with Sutherland and Gene Wilder, she said that Wilder was very funny even off set but Sutherland was on a different planet and a bit creepy , perhaps there was no need for Method acting in KH ??