The Winds of War (1983) 20 DARK Facts That You Didn’t Know About DD

He appointed himself director on top of producer [music] because he understood that a production this massive wasn’t really about artistry. It was about logistics. 267 international locations, 285 speaking [music] parts, thousands of extras, and one guy holding it all together. The man who used to figure out how to make a vampire look scary on a television budget.

And somehow, against all odds, he pulled it off. The Vampire Man directed one of the greatest war epics ever put on screen, [music] and nobody saw it coming. Number two, before Herman Vuk ever touched a single page of [music] the screenplay, somebody else was supposed to write it. His name was Jack Pullman. [music] And Pullman was no ordinary writer.

This was the guy who adapted Claudius for BBSC television, one of the most acclaimed and brutally complex dramatic series [music] ever made. Pullman was hired to take Wuk’s massive novel and turn it into something that could actually work on [music] screen. He and Woo sat down together. They worked for months. They built an outline scene by scene, mapping out the sprawling narrative across continents and years.

It was painstaking work, [music] careful, deliberate, collaborative. They were making real progress. And then out of nowhere, Jack Pullman died suddenly in 1979. So just like that, gone. The outline they had built together [music] was incomplete. The script was unfinished. And now the clock was ticking. So what did they do? They turned to the one person who knew this story better than anyone on the planet.

The man who wrote the novel in the first place. Herman [music] Vou picked up the pen and wrote the entire tea play himself. All 962 pages [music] of it. Every single scene. Every line of dialogue. [music] The man who had spent years crafting this novel as a book now had to reshape it entirely for television alone.

[music] And the result, one of the most faithful, meticulously detailed adaptations in [music] the history of the medium. Sometimes tragedy is what forces greatness. Number three, here is a casting story that sounds almost too sad to be true, but it is. Before John Houseman ever stepped [music] into the role of Aaron Jastro, the quiet, brilliant Jewish scholar at the emotional center of the [music] story, someone else was cast first, a legend, a titan of American theater and [music] film.

His name was Elise Strazberg, the Lee Strazberg, the man who literally invented method [music] acting as we know it. The guy who ran the actor’s studio in New York. The man who taught Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, and an [music] entire generation of the greatest performers in American history how to disappear into a role. Strawber was publicly announced as Aaron Jastro in February [music] of 1981.

Everyone was thrilled. It was perfect casting, a towering presence for one of the most emotionally significant parts in the entire production. And then the [music] worst happened. Strawber fell ill. seriously ill. Before he could film a single scene, before cameras ever rolled on his character, he had to withdraw from the production entirely.

Lee Strasburg died in 1982. He never got to [music] play the role. He was replaced by John Houseman, who turned in a magnificent performance. But here is the part that makes your stomach drop. Houseman [music] himself later had to withdraw from the sequel miniseries, War and Remembrance, because of his own illness. He died in 1988.

[music] The curse of Aaron Jastro swallowed two of the greatest actors of the 20th century. Number four, Robert Mitchum. [music] The towering granite jawed face of the winds of war. The man who carried the entire production on his shoulders [music] for 18 hours of screen time. The guy critics called an imposing battleship on screen.

[music] You would think Mitchum jumped at this role. A massive historic prestige [music] production. a role written for a man of his stature. You would think he was dying to do it. He was not. Mitchum later admitted openly that he only accepted the winds of [music] war because he was no longer being offered good film roles. He was in his mid60s.

Hollywood was done with him the way Hollywood is done with men who get too old to play the leading man. The big screen parts had dried up. The phone wasn’t ringing with the caliber of work he’d once enjoyed. So when this television miniseries came along, and back then television was still considered a step down from film, Mitchum shrugged and said yes.

Not out of passion, not out of artistic ambition. He did it because it was there. And then something remarkable happened. He showed up. He did the work. And he delivered one of the most quietly commanding performances in the history of American television. A man who took the job out of necessity, turned it into something genuinely iconic.

That’s [music] Robert Mitchum in a nutshell. And during production, he needed a reported 112 costume changes [music] across the entire shoot. 112. The man was wearing more outfits than a runway model. Number five. The very first scene of The Winds of [music] War opens in Berlin, 1939. Hitler’s Germany.

The atmosphere [music] is dark, imposing, dripping with menace. The architecture looms. The buildings [music] radiate power and dread. It sets the tone for everything that follows. Beautiful production design, [music] completely convincing and completely fake. Not a single frame of that Berlin opening was actually filmed in Berlin.

The production team shot the [music] entire exterior sequence in and around the Hofberg Palace in Vienna, Austria. Austria, not Germany. Not Berlin. Vienna. Now, you might think this is a minor detail, a little cheat. Filmmakers do this all the time, right? Sure, locations get swapped out for practical [music] reasons.

Budget, permits, logistics, but here’s what makes it genuinely interesting. The production had access to 404 different filming locations across six countries. They shot in Yugoslavia, West Germany, Italy, the UK, Austria, and all over California, and Washington State. They had the resources to go almost anywhere they wanted.

and they deliberately chose Vienna [music] to stand in for Berlin. The Hofberg Palace, originally built as a Hopsburg Imperial Residence, gave the production exactly the kind of [music] grand, intimidating European architecture it needed. Sometimes the best version of a place isn’t [music] the real one. It’s the one that looks even more like itself than the actual thing [music] does.

And Vienna apparently was a better Berlin than Berlin itself. It’s [music] a small detail, but it tells you something important about how The Winds of War was made. Not just with money, but with a sharp eye for what actually works [music] on screen. Number six, for all the money, for all the locations, for all the effort this production poured into making The Winds of War look and feel like the real thing.

When it came time to actually show the attack on Pearl Harbor on screen, Dan Curtis did something [music] that would make a lot of filmmakers wse. He didn’t shoot it himself, he borrowed it. [music] The Pearl Harbor attack sequence, one of the most iconic moments in the entire miniseries, [music] is built significantly from battle footage lifted directly from Torah.

Tora Tora, the massive 1970 war film that recreated the same attack. Footage from that movie appears during both the Pearl Harbor sequence and the scenes depicting the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Now, Torah, Torah, Torah [music] was itself an enormous production, one of the most expensive films ever made at the time with breathtaking aerial combat and explosive practical effects.

And Curtis essentially folded chunks of it into his own production. This wasn’t laziness. It was smart, ruthless film making. Why spend tens of millions recreating something that had already been done brilliantly? Why burn budget on sequences that audiences had already seen done magnificently on the big [music] screen? Curtis wo that existing footage seamlessly into the fabric of his miniseries, blending it with his own newly shot material so effectively that most viewers watching in 1983 had no idea they [music] were looking at

footage from a film that was already 13 years old. Recycling done right is invisible. Anne Curtis [music] did it very, very right. >> It’s a pipe dream, Pamela. The Germans are winning. We’re very close to Moscow right here. >> Number seven. One of the most visually striking sequences in the entire production was filmed aboard a real battleship.

Not a replica, not a setpiece. An actual full-scale United States Navy battleship, the USS [music] Missouri BB Beyond 63. One of the most famous warships in [music] American history. The very ship where Japan formally surrendered to end World War II in [music] 1945. Dan Curtis got permission to film scenes aboard the Missouri while it was still sitting in mothballs at the Naval Reserve in Breton, Washington.

Nobody was using it. It was just sitting there massive and dormant. Perfect. Except for one small problem, a really small problem actually that happens [music] to completely destroy the historical timeline of the production. The Winds of War is set between [music] 1939 and 1941. It ends at Pearl Harbor, but the USS Missouri wasn’t commissioned until 1944, 3 years after the story ends.

The ship literally did not exist [music] yet during any of the events depicted in the miniseries. And there it is, big as life. Hole number BB B63, [music] plainly visible on screen, sailing through scenes set in a world where it hasn’t been built. Eagy viewers caught it immediately. It became one of the most famous factual errors in the history of television.

But you have to hand it to Curtis. He had a real battleship. A real legendary world famous battleship. And he wasn’t going to let a little thing like chronological accuracy [music] get in the way of using it. >> A much smaller American task force. Sorties from Pearl Harbor. >> Number eight. Herman Vuk was not a [music] man who trusted other people with his story.

Not after what happened with his earlier novels, Marjgery Morning Star, The Cain Mutiny, Young Bloodood Hawk. Every single one of them had been adapted [music] for the screen before. And every single time, Woo was deeply, painfully unhappy with the result. The adaptations butchered [music] his work, changed things he didn’t want changed, took liberties he didn’t authorize.

So, when [music] the Winds of War finally came along, Woo made sure in his actual contract that [music] it would never happen again. He demanded and received extraordinary control over the production. Considerable influence over how the story was told. Veto power. [music] Real binding veto power. And here is where it gets genuinely fascinating.

Woo’s control extended beyond the creative content [music] of the show itself. He had the contractual right to decide which products could be advertised during [music] the broadcast. What commercials could air, how many commercials were allowed to run. [music] He personally approved or rejected the advertisements that OPBC was allowed to sell to sponsors.

Think about that for a second. While you [music] were sitting on your couch watching the winds of war in February of 1983, every single commercial break you sat through had been approved [music] a by the novelist. Herman Vuke was essentially the gatekeeper of your television experience that week. Not just the story, the [music] ads.

The man wrote a novel about the fate of the world. And he also controlled whether or not a particular brand of dish soap [music] could run a 30-cond spot during the war drama that is power. That is Herman Vuk. Number nine. Speaking of Herman Buou and his iron grip on every aspect of this production, did you know he actually appears in it oncreen in the flesh playing a character? Now Woo was [music] a famously private man extremely so.

At the Kennedy Center premiere screening in Washington DC, an event attended by Senators Robert McNamera, Ted Kennedy, and half of the Washington establishment. Woo refused every [music] single interview request flat out. I’m a very private person, he told reporters, and that was that. But apparently a small cameo was something he was willing to do.

Bu slipped into the production playing the Archbishop of Sienna, a minor, dignified, barely noticed role that passes [music] by on screen in what amounts to a blink. He’s there in his own adaptation, playing a man of the cloth in an Italian city during wartime. Most viewers had absolutely no idea it was the author of the novel staring back at them from the screen.

It’s one of those hidden Easter eggs that only the most dedicated fans ever caught. The man who spent years crafting this [music] story, who fought tooth and nail for control of every frame, who personally vetoed your television commercials. He gave himself exactly one tiny moment on screen. Just enough to say he was there.

Just enough to put his fingerprint on the final product. Hermon Vau, Archbishop of Sienna, for about 12 seconds of screen [music] time. And that was enough. Number 10. Behind the camera on the winds of war, working quietly in the machinery of the production was a man named Branco Lustig.

His job was [music] associate producer, a title that doesn’t exactly scream headlines. He was part of the Croatian film industry based out of Zagreb. And he had [music] worked on productions before. Fiddler on the roof, Sophie’s Choice. He knew the craft. [music] He knew the logistics. He was good at his job. But what most people on set didn’t fully grasp.

What made Lustig’s involvement in a World War II drama almost unbearably poignant [music] was what he had lived through as a child. Branco Lustig was imprisoned in Achvitz. [music] He was imprisoned in Bergen Bellson. He survived the Holocaust as a boy watching [music] his family be destroyed around him. His grandmother was killed in the gas chamber. His father was killed in 1945.

On the day of liberation, young Branco weighed 66 lb. And there he was, decades later, helping to build a television production about the very war that had nearly killed him and annihilated his family. He went on to work on the sequel War and Remembrance, [music] which included the first major production ever allowed to film Inside Achvitz.

And then, and this is the part that stops you cold, [music] Branco Lustig went on to produce Schindler’s List. He won an Academy Award for [music] best picture. Then he won a second Oscar for Gladiator, a Holocaust survivor, a man who started on the winds of war as a quietly working associate [music] producer. Two Academy Awards.

The journey from Achvitz to that stage [music] is one of the most extraordinary stories hiding inside the making of this miniseries. Number 11. If there is one casting decision in [music] the Winds of War that people still cannot stop talking about, it is Ali McGra as Natalie Jastro and [music] not in a good way.

Natalie is supposed to be a young idealistic Jewish woman caught in the crossfire of Nazi occupied Europe, vibrant, alive, burning with something real. McGraw was 44 years old when [music] she was cast, playing a woman who was supposed to be 19. 19. The math didn’t work. The energy didn’t work. Critics savaged her.

Audiences groaned. [music] And here is the part that makes it genuinely infuriating. Dan Curtis knew. Everyone knew. Fans of the novel had been screaming about it before a single frame was shot. Production executives flagged it repeatedly. But Curtis had made his decision and he was not budging. Not for anyone. He wanted McGra. Period.

She stayed. The performance stayed. For over 40 years, it has remained the most debated [music] casting choice in the history of this miniseries. The audience paid the price every [music] single time she opened her mouth on screen. Number 12, John Michael Vincent was supposed to be Byron Henry, [music] Pug’s rebellious goldenhaired son, the romantic lead, the guy who looks enough like Robert Mitchum that you believe they share blood.

Vincent had charisma. He had real presence on screen. On paper, the casting was absolutely perfect. Behind the scenes, [music] it was falling apart. Vincent was battling serious alcoholism throughout the entire shoot. [music] His drinking made him unreliable, difficult to work with. The kind of problem that nobody wants to say out loud on a $40 million production.

So, they kept going. They worked around him. The miniseries [music] aired. Vincent even earned a Golden Globe nomination. And then came War and Remembrance. The sequel needed a new Byron Henry. The official explanation was scheduling conflicts. Vincent was locked into Airwolf clean, simple, [music] believable.

But years later, cast and crew started talking DVD featurettes interviews. The truth came out. Vincent’s drinking had made him impossible to work with. He wasn’t replaced because of Airwolf. He was replaced because nobody on that set wanted to go through it again. Number 13. Ralph Bellamy didn’t just play [music] Franklin D.

Roosevelt in The Winds of War. He lived as that man for decades. It started on Broadway in 1958 when Bellamy starred in Sunrise [music] at Campobello, a play about FDR’s battle with polio. The performance was so deeply human, so quietly commanding that Bellamy won a Tony award for it. 2 years later, he repeated the role in the 1960 film.

23 years after that, when the Winds of War needed the most important president in American history to feel real on screen, [music] there was only one person who could do it. Bellamy slipped back into Roosevelt like he had never left. The physical weight of the man, [music] the warmth, the sharp political calculation behind every smile. Critics praised it immediately.

It became the emotional anchor of the entire production. He played FDR again in War and Remembrance. [music] And in 1987, the Academy gave him an honorary Oscar for a lifetime of extraordinary work. [music] Ralph Bellamy owned Franklin Roosevelt oncreen for 30 years. No one else ever came close. But number 14.

Here is the thing that makes certain fans of [music] historical drama lose their minds. The Winds of War spent $40 million. [music] It obsessed over period accuracy. It’s shot at 404 real locations [music] and it is spectacularly riddled with factual errors. Throughout the entire run, Robert Mitchum’s character wears the Bronze Star medal on his Navy uniform.

It looks correct. It looks official, except the Bronze Star wasn’t created until 1944. The show is set between 1939 and 1941. The metal does not exist yet. Then there’s the Canadian Maple Leaf Flag, [music] the modern one, flying in scenes shot in London. That flag wasn’t adopted until 1965.

A car drives on the wrong side [music] of the road in London. A plastic baby bottle appears in a 1940s scene. And of course, [music] there’s the USS Missouri cruising through 1941, 3 years before it was ever built. [music] The mistakes kept stacking up. Eagle-eyed viewers cataloged them obsessively. for a production that prides itself on getting World War II exactly [music] right.

The costumes, flags, and props were doing their own thing entirely. Number 15. ABC did not just air the [music] Winds of War. They launched it like a military operation. The network spent an estimated $23 million on a year-long advertising campaign. A blitz that kicked off nearly 12 months before the first episode hit the air.

23 million on promotion alone, more than half the production budget itself. They mailed 550,000 copies of a 24page color magazine to [music] schools and libraries across the country, introducing viewers to the five major wartime [music] leaders. They produced a half-hour documentary narrated by John Houseman and sent it to every ABC affiliate station in the nation.

Television spots, print [music] campaigns, everything. The stakes were enormous. February was Sweep’s month, the period when local ratings determined advertising rates for [music] the entire year. If the Winds of War bombed, ABC’s affiliates would bleed [music] money. The network was betting seven nights of prime time on one show, the biggest gamble [music] ABC had ever made.

And when the numbers came back, they knew immediately it had paid off beyond anything anyone had dared to hope. Number 16. When the final episode finished airing and ABC released the official numbers, [music] the television industry collectively dropped its jaw. 140 million Americans had watched all or part of [music] The Winds of War.

140 million. More than half the population of the United States. It didn’t just beat the record [music] for most watched miniseries in American history. It shattered it. The previous record holder was Roots with 135 million viewers in 1977. gone. The premiere night alone drew an estimated 80 million viewers into their living rooms [music] in a single evening.

During the week it aired, The Winds of War filled six of the top 10 [music] spots in the Neielson rankings all by itself. ABC’s [snorts] weekly rating hit 32.1 with a 46 share. CBS was a distant [music] second. NBC further back still. The show didn’t just win the week. [music] It obliterated the competition entirely. It proved something the television industry had been quietly wondering.

Whether Americans would actually sit down night after night for 18 hours [music] of war drama. The answer was an overwhelming thunderous yes. Number 17. Here is an irony that the people behind the winds of war will never fully shake. The miniaries attracted 140 million viewers. It was the most watched television event in [music] American history. It cost $40 million.

Abese spent another 23 million promoting it. And on Emmy night, the biggest ceremony in American television, it was completely [music] shut out. Zero wins, 13 nominations, not a single trophy on the main broadcast. The Washington Post wrote it plainly the next morning. Of 13 nominations, [music] Winds of War received not a single Emmy.

The best limited series of the night [music] went to a British import called Nicholas Nickelby, which none of the three major [music] networks had even been willing to air. The Winds of War, the cultural phenomenon that had dominated [music] American television for an entire week, went home empty-handed.

To be fair, the show did eventually win three technical Emmys, but those were handed out at an untelvised banquet a week before the main ceremony. Nobody was watching. The most watched miniseries in history couldn’t win a single Emmy on The Night That Mattered. Number 18. Three nights before the Winds of War hit American television, a premier screening was held at the Kennedy [music] Center in Washington DC.

The guest list was staggering. Robert Mitchum, Alli McGraw, John Houseman, Paulie Bergen, Peter Graves, Dan Curtis, Paramount Pictures. Owner Charles Blueornne hosted [music] the event. ABC motion pictures. President Brandon Stoddard was there. Jack Valente, Art Bwald, Senator Ted Kennedy, [music] former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamera, two additional senators.

Washington was out in force, glamorous, [music] prestigious, exactly the kind of event Hollywood lives for. And then there was Herman Vuk, the man whose novel had become all of this. The man who wrote the entire screenplay [music] himself. He was there standing in the middle of it. And when reporters approached him, eager, desperate [music] for a quote, Woo shut them down cold.

Every single request, [music] flat refusal. “I’m a very private person,” he said. That was it. The most [music] powerful creative force behind the production, surrounded by senators and studio executives, wouldn’t give a single interview. Woke didn’t need the attention. [music] He already had everything he wanted.

Number 19. After the Winds of War became the biggest television event in American history, the [music] sequel was inevitable. War and Remembrance. Same story, same families, [music] the next chapter. And ABC came back to Dan Curtis with the obvious offer, come back and direct. [music] And Curtis said no flat out. He was terrified.

[music] The sequel required depicting the Holocaust in full graphic, unflinching detail. Curtis, who was Jewish himself, wrestled with the weight of it. He told people openly that putting the true horror on film felt impossible. One false note, [music] he said, “And the whole thing collapses. Failing at that would be an absolute [music] crime.

” So, he walked away, refused the job entirely, and then his wife, Norma, stepped in. She didn’t argue about the script or the budget. She told him something simple, direct, and devastating. “You’ll kill yourself if someone else finishes this story.” Curtis looked at her, thought about it, and said yes.

War and Remembrance became the most expensive television production ever made and [music] the first major production ever allowed to film inside Avitz. Number 20. Deep beneath Oz AFBridge [music] in a bunker west of London sits one of the most historically significant rooms in the world, the operations room. [music] the actual command center where the Royal Air Force coordinated Britain’s entire fighter defense during the Battle [music] of Britain in 1940.

This is where real officers tracked real German aircraft in real time as the Luftvafa tried to destroy England from the sky. One of the most consequential rooms in human history. And for decades after the war, the British military kept it sealed, classified, almost never open to the public.

So, when Dan Curtis’s production secured special permission to [music] film inside the actual operations room, not a replica, the genuine article, it was a remarkable achievement. The Battle of Britain command [music] scenes were shot in that bunker. The real thing, most viewers had no idea they were looking at the actual room where [music] the fate of Britain was decided.

It gave those scenes a gravity that no television set could ever replicate. Curtis didn’t fake it. He found the real room and he put it on screen. Here is your bonus fact, [music] and it is a good one. The man who wrote The Winds of War, who wrote the entire screenplay himself after the original screenwriter died, [music] who personally vetoed your television commercials, who played the Archbishop of Sienna for 12 [music] seconds on screen, who refused every single interview at the Kennedy Center premiere. Herman Woo lived to be 103

years old. He died in 2019. [music] He outlived Dan Curtis, who died in 2006. He outlived Robert Mitchum who died in 1997. [music] He outlived John Houseman. He outlived Lee Strasburg. He outlived virtually everyone who ever touched this production. The man held this story for decades.

From novel to screenplay [music] to screen to legacy. Long after the camera stopped rolling. Long after the awards were handed out and the controversies faded, Vuk kept living. He kept writing. He kept watching the world move on. Herman Vuk didn’t just write [music] the winds of war. He outlived it. He survived it.