Did You Know?
The one-armed man tells Jack Burns in the bar that he lost his arm at Okinawa during World War II. Bill Raisch, the actor who played the one-armed man, actually did lose his right arm in a fire on board a ship during the war. Raisch was Burt Lancaster's stand-in and later landed a recurring role in the TV series The Fugitive.
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Not only does Kirk Douglas consider this his favorite picture, but his son Michael Douglas considers it his father's best work, too.
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After Kirk Douglas read the novel "Brave Cowboy" by Edward Abbey, he purchased the rights to it and gave the project to his friend Dalton Trumbo. Douglas said Trumbo's screenplay was perfect, the best he had ever read, and he didn't change one word of it.
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The helicopter used in the manhunt for Burns was a 1960 Bell 47J-2, serial number 1810. The FAA registration number is N8411E. This bird still lives and is used for aerial advertising.
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Kirk Douglas intended to call the film "The Last Cowboy" but was overruled by the studio.
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Twentieth Century Fox composer Alfred Newman had admired Jerry Goldsmith's work on the TV series Thriller and recommended that the young composer be hired. It proved the first major credit in what would become a long and productive career as a film composer.
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Jerry Goldsmith wrote cues for the scenes when Whisky is hit by the truck and later when he is dying that were not used.
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When preparing a compilation of film clips for Kirk Douglas' life achievement award by the Shoah Foundation, Steven Spielberg couldn't locate footage from this film and asked Universal for a clip. Spielberg recommended to the studio that the film be green-lighted for preservation, which it was.
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