“He didn’t even know my name”: how an unruly actor accidentally gave Donald Sutherland his big break
Breakthrough roles can’t be manufactured or precision-engineered, not that Donald Sutherland was expecting anything more than a single line of dialogue when he first signed on for the movie that would ultimately be remembered as a pivotal moment in his career.
He was the relative newcomer among a cast of seasoned professionals, household names, and wily veterans, so he was happy enough just to be there. However, thanks to one wayward actor deciding that arguing with the director was the smartest thing to do, Sutherland ended up with his most prominent big-screen gig by far.
To put things into context, by the time production began on Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen in the summer of 1966, Sutherland’s two previous credits had been as an uncredited autograph hunter in Warren Beatty’s rom-com Promise Her Anything and as a guy sitting at a computer in Michael Caine’s spy sequel Billion Dollar Brain.
Still fairly wet behind the ears, here he was sharing an ensemble with the legendary Lee Marvin, hot off the back of his ‘Best Actor’ win at the Academy Awards for Cat Ballou. Fellow Oscar winner Ernest Borgnine, superstar Charles Bronson, NFL icon Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, and George Kennedy were also presented and accounted for, making Sutherland the baby of the group by far.
Vernon L Pinkley was such an unimportant character in Aldrich’s eyes that the director didn’t even bother to learn the name of the actor playing the part. However, he was swiftly bumped up in the ensemble when another one of his colleagues opted to try and take a stand against the way their own role was to be portrayed.
Clint Walker had found plenty of fame and admiration as the star of hit TV series Cheyenne, which made history as the first hourlong drama series with a recurring cast to last more than a single season. Not that it mattered to Aldrich, who simply refused to sanction any of his actors talking out of turn.
“Walker is reading the script, and Walker was supposed to do the scene where the general is inspecting the troops,” Sutherland explained to Rolling Stone. “He very graciously held up his hand and said, ‘Mr. Aldrich, as a representative of the Native American community, I think it’s incorrect that I play this stupid character that pretends to be a general.”
The director disagreed, which inadvertently opened the door for Sutherland. “And without even looking, Bob just said, ‘You with the big ears, you do it,'” he continued. “He didn’t even know my name. And I got the scene.” It was a fortuitous set of circumstances, and having more to do in a box office hit and an Oscar-winning adventure like The Dirty Dozen was the biggest spotlight the star had ever been placed under on the silver screen, which would never have happened were it not for Walker’s insolence.
