From Today I Found Out.

On June 15, 1977, n major war film premiered at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts: A Bridge Too Far. Based on the 1974 book by historian Cornelius Ryan and directed by Richard Attenborough, the film told the story of Operation Market Garden, the Allies’ ambitious but doomed airborne assault against Nazi-occupied Holland in September 1944. An epic in every sense of the word, the film boasted massive battle sequences featuring hundreds of real tanks, aircraft, and parachutists, and a veritable who’s who of 1970s A-list actors including Sean Connery, Gene Hackman, Robert Redford, James Caan, Elliott Gould, Anthony Hopkins, Dirk Bogarde, and Laurence Olivier. Yet despite its grand scale and star-studded cast, the film received mixed reviews upon release, and like every other film released in the summer of 1977, was absolutely trounced at the box office by an obscure little indie film about a boy who meets an old hermit who convinces the boy to run away with him and join his cult, then almost immediately starts having the boy play with his sword in front of him, including sensory deprivation play via a blast shield, all the while continually urging the boy to use more force when playing with his sword. Later the boy joins a group of terrorists who murder just under 1.7 million military personnel and another quarter million civilian staff just doing their jobs aboard the space station they worked, and then we’re pretty sure he bones his sister.

In more recent years, however, A Bridge Too Far has been reappraised and is now considered a classic, drawing particular praise for its epic battle sequences, its largely accurate and sensitive handling of the real history, and its memorable characters. Perhaps the most memorable of all is Major Harry Carlyle, played by actor Christopher Good, who carries an umbrella into battle to prove he is an Englishman since, as he explains, he can never remember passwords. But while such an eccentric character trait might seem like the invention of a particularly creative Hollywood screenwriter, incredibly Major Carlyle is based on a real British paratrooper who really did charge into battle wielding an umbrella. What’s more, the film barely scratches the surface of the real man’s legendary exploits. This is the absurd and rather legendary tale of Major Digby Tatham-Warter, the most British soldier to ever British soldier. So let’s dive into it all, shall we?

Author: Gilles Messier
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Host: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Caden Nielsen