Clint's hair

Good point - and in that vein(yes, I know they were enemy agents, but they're SUPPOSED to be elite British paratroopers)Thomas' Herman's Hermits cowcurl, or Christiansen's Hasselhoff-baiting perm.

Awesome film.

:O)

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McClean wrote the movie script before developing it into a novel.

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It's probably difficult to ask stars of their calibre to cut their hair for a film.

Moreover, the filmmakers here was not exactly taking a documentary-style approach to this film. Indeed, I doubt that they even considered asking Eastwood to cut his hair.

Eastwood also refused to call Smith "Boss" as he does in the novel, and never once expressed his hatred toward horses (also in the novel). There's also an exchange with Smith about the electric fence that's switched around to bring his intelligence into play.

Alistair MacLean didn't write the novel until after the film (a 'novelization,' technically); Where Eagles Dare represented his first original screenplay. Once he came to write the novel, MacLean could engage in more creative freedom, knowing that he was no longer writing for a movie that would feature two major stars.

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Mmm, I think it was pretty typical of how Eastwood wore his hair in the 60's, in films like the spaghetti westerns, Hang 'em High, Coogan's Bluff, and Paint Your Wagon.

He wore it a little longer in the 70's in films like Dirty Harry, Play Misty for Me, Joe Kidd, and High Plains Drifter.

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Which is why I admired John Cassavetes for cutting his hair really short(at the height of the sixties long hair boom) for his role in "The Dirty Dozen" , which lent credibility to his character along with his great acting skills.

If you look at any big star (so a lot more conspicuous than Cassavetes was) who considered himself a serious actor through the Sixties, who had his own image to maintain -- talking about Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Rod Steiger, Sidney Poitier, Jack Lemmon and on and on -- NONE of them took to adopting a Beatle cut for their movies just because it was the (passing) fashion. I think this had as much to do with being their own person and sustaining their own look as with credibility for their roles in being able to play an "everyman".

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Which is why I admired John Cassavetes for cutting his hair really short(at the height of the sixties long hair boom) for his role in "The Dirty Dozen" , which lent credibility to his character along with his great acting skills.

The 'sixties long hair boom' didn't really affect most of Hollywood, or most of America, until the 1970s. In 1966, when MGM shot The Dirty Dozen, hardly any Americans, especially beyond teenagers and the small number of hippies and rock musicians, sported long hair.

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