00:01Originally in Screaming Eagles, Tom Tryon was cast in the role of Lieutenant Pauling,
00:06and Jan Merlin was supposed to play Private Mason.
00:08But before shooting began, director Charles Haas switched their roles because Tryon was
00:13taller and he felt it would be easier for him to carry Merlin instead of the other way
00:17around.
00:18Both actors were happy with the switch because it allowed them to play against the types
00:22that they usually played on screen.
00:24The script for Screaming Eagles was credited to two men, David Lang and Robert Presnell Jr.,
00:30whose father was the Oscar-nominated screenwriter behind Frank Capra's Meet John Doe.
00:35But the original story for this action-packed war movie was written by a woman, Virginia
00:40Kellogg.
00:41Kellogg was a former newspaper reporter who became a screenwriter in the early 1930s.
00:46In 1949, she wrote the story for one of the best crime dramas of all time, White Heat,
00:51which earned her an Oscar nomination.
00:53She earned a second Oscar nomination one year later for her original story and screenplay
00:58for the 1950 women's prison drama, Caged.
01:01To write that film, she did extensive research into America's prison system and even spent
01:06two weeks behind bars.
01:08Up next is a tense crime thriller from 1967 starring Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson.
01:16Next on TCM, Point Blank, then Scarecrow, and later Dog Day Afternoon, Buscemi Takes Two on TCM Tonight.
