Go Tell the Spartans
Encyclopedia
Go Tell the Spartans is a 1978
American war film
based on Daniel Ford
's 1967 novel Incident at Muc Wa, about U.S. Army military advisors during the early part of the Vietnam War
in 1964, a time when Ford was a correspondent in Vietnam for The Nation
.
The film's title is from Simonides
's epitaph to the three hundred soldiers who died fighting Persian invaders at Thermopylae
, Greece: "Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie."
to Phnom Penh
(Cambodia) highway that a decade earlier had been the scene of a massacre of French soldiers during the First Indochina War
. Barker is a weary infantry veteran in his third war, who provides veteran supervision to a cadre of advisors attached to a group of South Vietnamese who garrison the deserted village of Muc Wa.
Barker, as a seasoned officer, knows that he cannot defend his position due to lack of numbers and the quality of his local troops. He is still obliged to carry out the orders of his superior, General Harnitz, who sends Barker U.S. re-enforcements to appease him. His command consists of a handful of U.S. soldiers (encompassing the inexperienced, unhappy, idealistic and glory-seeking) and some reluctant former Vietnamese paddy farmers turned militiamen. Barker is a capable commander who has ended his career by having an affair with a senior officer's wife. He argues that the hamlet is deserted and has no importance, but sends a detachment from his command. The detachment is commanded by the brash but nervous Lt. Hamilton, and includes veteran sergeant Oleonowski, who is suffering from battle fatigue, a drug-addicted medic (Lincoln), and a young draftee (Courcey), who quickly befriends an elderly native volunteer (Old Man).
On their way to Muc Wa the column is ambushed, resulting in ARVN Cpl. Cowboy beheading the Viet Cong attacker. On reaching the hamlet, Hamilton sets up his defences in a triangular formation and receives supplies brought in by helicopter. At the rear of the hamlet is a graveyard and while he is investigating it, Courcey spots a one-eyed Viet Cong soldier. Back at Barker's base, Barker receives a Psy-ops officer who claims that he will be able to predict which one of Barker's outposts the Viet Cong will attack next.
During the following night Muc Wa is attacked by the Viet Cong, sustaining its first casualty (Lt. Hamilton). The next day Sgt Oleonowski commits suicide rather than face the pressure of command. When Barker is informed of the deaths, he wants to pull his troops out now that they lack an experienced leader, but this request is refused by Harnitz, forcing Barker to send his own deputy to Muc Wa. When the psy-ops man predicts Muc Wa will be attacked, Barker contacts them by radio only to learn that they're under attack from the Viet Cong.
True to Barker's predictions, the outpost is overwhelmed by the Viet Cong but not before Barker has relieved the surviving U.S. soldiers. This leaves Barker, Courcey, the Old Man and his fellow South Vietnamese militiamen at Muc Wa, and in the ensuing battle almost everyone is killed, including Barker who had stayed behind to cover their escape. The only American survivor is ironically the willing volunteer, Courcey, whose idealism and enthusiasm for the Vietnam War
has now been killed along with all his comrades and the one-eyed Viet Cong soldier Courcey saw earlier.
was shopped around for years with various older leading men in the role of Major Asa Barker.
Director Ted Post
persuaded Avco Embassy Pictures to produce the film on a limited budget with the film shot in California with Vietnamese migrants. He sent the script to a friend of Burt Lancaster
, then 65 years old, who was recuperating from a knee injury – his Maj. Barker limps throughout the film. Calling the script brilliant, Lancaster agreed to star in it and when the 31-day production budget ran short, he paid $150,000 to complete it. The younger actors cast were Marc Singer
as infantry Captain Mark Olivetti, a gung-ho career officer seeking to earn the Combat Infantryman Badge
and Craig Wasson
as Corporal Courcey, the idealistic college-educated draftee who wants to see what a real war is like.
Though the film had a limited release in the United States, critics, especially those opposed to the Vietnam War, praised it: "In sure, swift strokes," wrote Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
in the Saturday Review, "it shows the irrelevance of the American presence in Vietnam, the corruption wrought by that irrelevance, and the fortuity, cruelty, and waste of an irrelevant war." Stanley Kauffmann
in The New Republic
found it "the best film I've seen about the Vietnam War." More broadly, Roger Grooms in the Cincinnati Enquirer judged it to be "one of the noblest films, ever, about men in crisis."
Over time, the film became an overlooked anti-war classic. At one of its revivals, it was described as:
In 1979, Wendell Mayes' screenplay was nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award
for
"Best Drama Adapted from Another Medium (Screen)".
1978 in film
The year 1978 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* February 1 - Bob Dylan's film Renaldo and Clara, a documentary of the "Rolling Thunder Revue" tour premieres in Los Angeles, California....
American war film
War film
War films are a film genre concerned with warfare, usually about naval, air or land battles, sometimes focusing instead on prisoners of war, covert operations, military training or other related subjects. At times war films focus on daily military or civilian life in wartime without depicting battles...
based on Daniel Ford
Daniel Ford
Daniel Ford is an American journalist, novelist, and historian. The son of Patrick and Anne Ford, he attended public schools in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, graduating in 1950 from Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. He was educated at the University of New Hampshire Daniel Ford...
's 1967 novel Incident at Muc Wa, about U.S. Army military advisors during the early part of the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
in 1964, a time when Ford was a correspondent in Vietnam for The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
.
The film's title is from Simonides
Simonides of Ceos
Simonides of Ceos was a Greek lyric poet, born at Ioulis on Kea. The scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets, along with Bacchylides and Pindar...
's epitaph to the three hundred soldiers who died fighting Persian invaders at Thermopylae
Thermopylae
Thermopylae is a location in Greece where a narrow coastal passage existed in antiquity. It derives its name from its hot sulphur springs. "Hot gates" is also "the place of hot springs and cavernous entrances to Hades"....
, Greece: "Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie."
Plot
It's 1964 in the period when American troops were euphemistically termed "military advisors" in Vietnam. Major Asa Barker (Burt Lancaster) has been given this command: a poorly-manned outpost named Muc Wa in rural Vietnam somewhere near the Da NangDa Nang
Đà Nẵng , occasionally Danang, is a major port city in the South Central Coast of Vietnam, on the coast of the South China Sea at the mouth of the Han River. It is the commercial and educational center of Central Vietnam; its well-sheltered, easily accessible port and its location on the path of...
to Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh is the capital and largest city of Cambodia. Located on the banks of the Mekong River, Phnom Penh has been the national capital since the French colonized Cambodia, and has grown to become the nation's center of economic and industrial activities, as well as the center of security,...
(Cambodia) highway that a decade earlier had been the scene of a massacre of French soldiers during the First Indochina War
First Indochina War
The First Indochina War was fought in French Indochina from December 19, 1946, until August 1, 1954, between the French Union's French Far East...
. Barker is a weary infantry veteran in his third war, who provides veteran supervision to a cadre of advisors attached to a group of South Vietnamese who garrison the deserted village of Muc Wa.
Barker, as a seasoned officer, knows that he cannot defend his position due to lack of numbers and the quality of his local troops. He is still obliged to carry out the orders of his superior, General Harnitz, who sends Barker U.S. re-enforcements to appease him. His command consists of a handful of U.S. soldiers (encompassing the inexperienced, unhappy, idealistic and glory-seeking) and some reluctant former Vietnamese paddy farmers turned militiamen. Barker is a capable commander who has ended his career by having an affair with a senior officer's wife. He argues that the hamlet is deserted and has no importance, but sends a detachment from his command. The detachment is commanded by the brash but nervous Lt. Hamilton, and includes veteran sergeant Oleonowski, who is suffering from battle fatigue, a drug-addicted medic (Lincoln), and a young draftee (Courcey), who quickly befriends an elderly native volunteer (Old Man).
On their way to Muc Wa the column is ambushed, resulting in ARVN Cpl. Cowboy beheading the Viet Cong attacker. On reaching the hamlet, Hamilton sets up his defences in a triangular formation and receives supplies brought in by helicopter. At the rear of the hamlet is a graveyard and while he is investigating it, Courcey spots a one-eyed Viet Cong soldier. Back at Barker's base, Barker receives a Psy-ops officer who claims that he will be able to predict which one of Barker's outposts the Viet Cong will attack next.
During the following night Muc Wa is attacked by the Viet Cong, sustaining its first casualty (Lt. Hamilton). The next day Sgt Oleonowski commits suicide rather than face the pressure of command. When Barker is informed of the deaths, he wants to pull his troops out now that they lack an experienced leader, but this request is refused by Harnitz, forcing Barker to send his own deputy to Muc Wa. When the psy-ops man predicts Muc Wa will be attacked, Barker contacts them by radio only to learn that they're under attack from the Viet Cong.
True to Barker's predictions, the outpost is overwhelmed by the Viet Cong but not before Barker has relieved the surviving U.S. soldiers. This leaves Barker, Courcey, the Old Man and his fellow South Vietnamese militiamen at Muc Wa, and in the ensuing battle almost everyone is killed, including Barker who had stayed behind to cover their escape. The only American survivor is ironically the willing volunteer, Courcey, whose idealism and enthusiasm for the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
has now been killed along with all his comrades and the one-eyed Viet Cong soldier Courcey saw earlier.
Cast
- Burt LancasterBurt LancasterBurton Stephen "Burt" Lancaster was an American film actor noted for his athletic physique and distinctive smile...
as Maj. Asa Barker - Craig WassonCraig Wasson-Career:Wasson's first feature film was the 1977 suspense thriller Rollercoaster. In 1978, he appeared in two films about the Vietnam war: first as a private in The Boys in Company C and then as a corporal in Go Tell the Spartans. In 1982, he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for New Star of...
as Cpl. Courcey - Jonathan GoldsmithJonathan GoldsmithJonathan Goldsmith is an American actor. He began his career on the New York stage, then started a career in film and television. He appeared in several TV shows in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s...
as Sgt. Oleonowski - Marc SingerMarc SingerMarc Singer is a Canadian-born American actor best known for his roles in the Beastmaster film series and as Mike Donovan in the original 1980s TV series V.-Personal life:...
as Capt. Olivetti - Joe UngerJoe UngerJoseph 'Joe' Unger is an American actor who has starred in many films and on television. He is best known for his role in the 1984 horror hit film A Nightmare on Elm Street as Sgt...
as Lt. Hamilton - Dennis HowardDennis HowardDennis Howard is an American politician from Oklahoma that served as the Oklahoma Secretary of Agriculture under former Governor of Oklahoma Frank Keating. Concurrent with his service as Secretary, Howard served as the Oklahoma Commissioner of Agriculture...
as Cpl. Abraham Lincoln - David ClennonDavid ClennonDavid Clennon is an American actor perhaps best known for his portrayal of Miles Drentel in the ABC series Thirtysomething, a role he reprised on Once and Again....
as Lt. Finley Wattsberg - Evan C. KimEvan C. KimEvan C. Kim is an American actor. He is best known for playing Loo in the 1977 comedy The Kentucky Fried Movie's "A Fistful of Yen" segment, the interpreter Cowboy in the 1978 Vietnam War film Go Tell the Spartans, the erudite caveman Nook in the cult 1981 comedy Caveman, Suki in the 1982 B movie...
as Cpl. "Cowboy" - John MegnaJohn MegnaJohn Megna was an American actor whose Broadway success at the age of seven in 1960's All the Way Home led to his being cast as Charles Baker 'Dill' Harris, the toothy young summer visitor in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird...
as Cpl. Ackley - Hilly HicksHilly HicksHilly Gene Hicks is an American character actor, born May 4, 1950 in Los Angeles, California.-Biography:The role for which Hicks is perhaps best known is Lewis Moore in the TV mini-series Roots...
as Signalman Toffee - Dolph SweetDolph SweetDolph Sweet was an American actor, credited with nearly 60 television and film roles as well as several roles in stage productions before his death from cancer in 1985.-Biography:...
as Gen. Harnitz - Clyde KusatsuClyde KusatsuClyde Kusatsu is a U.S. actor.Kusatsu was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he attended ʻIolani School. Kusatsu began acting in Honolulu summer stock, and after studying theatre at Northwestern University, started to make his mark on the small screen in the mid-1970s...
as Col. "Lard Ass" Minh - James HongJames HongJames Hong is an American actor and former president of the Association of Asian/Pacific American Artists . A prolific acting veteran, Hong's career spans over 50 years and includes more than 350 roles in film, television, and video games.-Early life:Hong was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His...
as Pvt. "Old Man" - Denice Kumagai as "Butterfly"
- Tad HorinoTad HorinoTadashi Horino was an American film and television actor.-Selected filmography:Tadashi Horino had an impressive career in film and television...
as "One-eyed Charlie" (Vietcong scout) - Phong Diep as Minh's Interpreter
- Ralph Brannen as Col. Minh's ADC
- Mark Carlton as Capt. Schlitz
Production
The screenplay by Wendell MayesWendell Mayes
Wendell Mayes was a Hollywood screenwriter. His father Von Mayes was a lawyer and his mother Irene was a teacher.Mayes began as an actor...
was shopped around for years with various older leading men in the role of Major Asa Barker.
Director Ted Post
Ted Post
Ted Post is an American TV and film director.Born in Brooklyn, New York, he started his career in show business in 1938 working as an usher at Loew's Pitkin Theater. He abandoned plans to become an actor after training with Tamara Daykarhanova, and turned to directing summer theater...
persuaded Avco Embassy Pictures to produce the film on a limited budget with the film shot in California with Vietnamese migrants. He sent the script to a friend of Burt Lancaster
Burt Lancaster
Burton Stephen "Burt" Lancaster was an American film actor noted for his athletic physique and distinctive smile...
, then 65 years old, who was recuperating from a knee injury – his Maj. Barker limps throughout the film. Calling the script brilliant, Lancaster agreed to star in it and when the 31-day production budget ran short, he paid $150,000 to complete it. The younger actors cast were Marc Singer
Marc Singer
Marc Singer is a Canadian-born American actor best known for his roles in the Beastmaster film series and as Mike Donovan in the original 1980s TV series V.-Personal life:...
as infantry Captain Mark Olivetti, a gung-ho career officer seeking to earn the Combat Infantryman Badge
Combat Infantryman Badge
The Combat Infantryman Badge is the U.S. Army combat service recognition decoration awarded to soldiers—enlisted men and officers holding colonel rank or below, who personally fought in active ground combat while an assigned member of either an infantry or a Special Forces unit, of brigade size...
and Craig Wasson
Craig Wasson
-Career:Wasson's first feature film was the 1977 suspense thriller Rollercoaster. In 1978, he appeared in two films about the Vietnam war: first as a private in The Boys in Company C and then as a corporal in Go Tell the Spartans. In 1982, he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for New Star of...
as Corporal Courcey, the idealistic college-educated draftee who wants to see what a real war is like.
Release and reception
Go Tell the Spartans was released in the United States on June 14, 1978. It was re-released on September 7, 1987, and came out on video in the United States on May 13, 1992.Though the film had a limited release in the United States, critics, especially those opposed to the Vietnam War, praised it: "In sure, swift strokes," wrote Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. was an American historian and social critic whose work explored the American liberalism of political leaders including Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Schlesinger served as special assistant and "court historian"...
in the Saturday Review, "it shows the irrelevance of the American presence in Vietnam, the corruption wrought by that irrelevance, and the fortuity, cruelty, and waste of an irrelevant war." Stanley Kauffmann
Stanley Kauffmann
Stanley Kauffmann is an American author, editor, and critic of film and theatre. He has written for The New Republic since 1958 and currently contributes film criticism to that magazine....
in The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
found it "the best film I've seen about the Vietnam War." More broadly, Roger Grooms in the Cincinnati Enquirer judged it to be "one of the noblest films, ever, about men in crisis."
Over time, the film became an overlooked anti-war classic. At one of its revivals, it was described as:
A cult fave — and deservedly so — Go Tell the Spartans was hard-headed and brutally realistic about our dead-end presence in Vietnam; released the same year as Coming Home and The Deer HunterThe Deer HunterThe Deer Hunter is a 1978 drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Russian American steel worker friends and their infantry service in the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Savage, John Cazale, and George Dzundza...
, the film won critical admiration, but audiences preferred individualised sagas, sentiment, and romantic melodrama. Rather than tackle the effects of the war on physically and emotionally wounded vets, this brave film exposed the fundamental, tactical lunacy of the war as perceived by an American officer (Burt Lancaster) who knows better, but must follow through on stupid, self-destructive orders from above. This is one of Lancaster's best performances: embittered, a cog in the military juggernaut, this good man foresees the killing waste to come.
In 1979, Wendell Mayes' screenplay was nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award
Writers Guild of America Award
The Writers Guild of America Award for outstanding achievements in film, television, and radio has been presented annually by the Writers Guild of America, East and Writers Guild of America, West since 1949...
for
"Best Drama Adapted from Another Medium (Screen)".