Walter E. Kurtz
Encyclopedia
Colonel Walter E. Kurtz is a fictional character
and the main antagonist of the 1979 film Apocalypse Now
, portrayed by Marlon Brando
. Colonel Kurtz is based on the character of a 19th century ivory trader, also called Kurtz
, from the novella
Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
.
. In his first tour of Vietnam
in 1964, he was sent by the Joint Chiefs of Staff
to compile a report on the failings of the current military policies. His report was not what was expected and was immediately restricted for the joint chiefs and President Lyndon B. Johnson
only.
Not long after, Kurtz applied for the 5th Special Forces Group, which was denied to him out of hand because of his advanced age of 38 for the basic training. Kurtz continued with his ambition and even threatened to quit the armed forces, when finally his wish was granted and he was allowed to take the airborne course. Kurtz graduated in a class where he was nearly twice the age of the other trainees, and was accepted into the 5th Special Forces Group.
Kurtz returned to Vietnam in 1966 with the "Green Berets" and was part of the hearts and minds campaign
which also included fortifying hamlets. On his next tour, Kurtz was assigned to the Gamma Project, in which he was to raise an army of Montagnards
in and around the Vietnamese–Cambodian border to strike at the Viet Cong and N.V.A. Kurtz located his army, including their wives and children, at a remote abandoned Cambodian temple which they fortified. From their base, Kurtz led attacks on the local V.C. and the regular N.V.A. in the region.
Kurtz employed barbaric methods not only to defeat his enemy but also to send fear. At first MACV didn't object to Kurtz's tactics, especially as they proved successful, but this soon changed when Kurtz allowed photographs of his atrocities to be released to the world. In late 1968, when Kurtz failed to respond to MACV's repeated orders to return to Da Nang
and resign his command after he ordered the summary execution of four South Vietnamese intelligence agents whom he suspected of being double agents for the Viet Cong, the MACV sent a "Green Beret" Captain named Richard Colby to bring Kurtz back from Cambodia. Colby joined up with Kurtz instead of bringing him back to Da Nang, either because he was brainwashed or because he felt a sympathy to Kurtz's cause.
With Colby's failure, MACV then selected Captain Benjamin L. Willard
, a former paratrooper and now a CIA assassin, to journey up the Nung river and kill Kurtz. Willard succeeds with his mission only because Kurtz, himself broken mentally by the savage war he wages, wants Willard to kill him and release him from his own suffering. Before Willard kills him, Kurtz asks Willard to find Kurtz's wife and son and explain truthfully what he'd done in the war.
, from the novella
Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
. However, the character is widely believed to have been modeled after Tony Poe, a highly-decorated and highly unorthodox Vietnam-era Paramilitary Officer from the CIA's Special Activities Division
. Poe was known to drop severed heads into enemy-controlled villages as a form of psychological warfare
and to use human ears to record the number of enemies his indigenous troops had killed. He would send these ears back to his superiors as proof of his efforts deep inside Laos
. Coppola, however, denies that Poe was a primary influence and instead says the character was loosely based on Special Forces Colonel Robert B. Rheault
, whose 1969 arrest over the murder of a suspected double agent generated substantial news coverage.
Filming was put on a week-long filming hiatus so that Brando and Coppola could resolve their creative disputes. It is claimed that someone left Conrad's source text, which Coppola had repeatedly referred to him to - but which he had never read - the houseboat which Brando was staying in at the time. He returned to filming with his head shaved, wanting to be 'Kurtz' once again; claiming it was all clear to him now that he had read Conrad's novella.
Still photographs of Brando in character as Major Penderton, in the 1967 film Reflections in a Golden Eye, were used later by the producers of Apocalypse Now
, who needed photos of a younger Brando to appear in the service record
of the younger Colonel Walter Kurtz.
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
and the main antagonist of the 1979 film Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American war film set during the Vietnam War, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The central character is US Army special operations officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard , of MACV-SOG, an assassin sent to kill the renegade and presumed insane Special Forces...
, portrayed by Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
. Colonel Kurtz is based on the character of a 19th century ivory trader, also called Kurtz
Kurtz (Heart of Darkness)
Mr. Kurtz is a central fictional character in Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness. A trader of ivory in Africa and commander of a trading post, he monopolises his position as a demigod among native Africans. Kurtz meets with the protagonist, Marlow, who returns him to the coast via steamboat...
, from the novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1903 publication, it appeared as a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine. It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" and part of the Western canon.The story centres on Charles...
by Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
.
Biography
Walter Kurtz was a regular army officer in the United States Army; he had risen through the ranks and was seen to be destined for a top post within the PentagonThe Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
. In his first tour of Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
in 1964, he was sent by the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Joint Chiefs of Staff is a body of senior uniformed leaders in the United States Department of Defense who advise the Secretary of Defense, the Homeland Security Council, the National Security Council and the President on military matters...
to compile a report on the failings of the current military policies. His report was not what was expected and was immediately restricted for the joint chiefs and President Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
only.
Not long after, Kurtz applied for the 5th Special Forces Group, which was denied to him out of hand because of his advanced age of 38 for the basic training. Kurtz continued with his ambition and even threatened to quit the armed forces, when finally his wish was granted and he was allowed to take the airborne course. Kurtz graduated in a class where he was nearly twice the age of the other trainees, and was accepted into the 5th Special Forces Group.
Kurtz returned to Vietnam in 1966 with the "Green Berets" and was part of the hearts and minds campaign
Hearts and Minds (Vietnam)
Hearts and Minds refers to a short lived campaign by the United States military during the Vietnam War intended to win the popular support of the Vietnamese people.-History:...
which also included fortifying hamlets. On his next tour, Kurtz was assigned to the Gamma Project, in which he was to raise an army of Montagnards
Degar
The Degar are the indigenous peoples of the Central Highlands of Vietnam. The term Montagnard means "mountain people" in French and is a carryover from the French colonial period in Vietnam. In Vietnamese, they are known by the term thượng - this term can also be applied to other minority ethnic...
in and around the Vietnamese–Cambodian border to strike at the Viet Cong and N.V.A. Kurtz located his army, including their wives and children, at a remote abandoned Cambodian temple which they fortified. From their base, Kurtz led attacks on the local V.C. and the regular N.V.A. in the region.
Kurtz employed barbaric methods not only to defeat his enemy but also to send fear. At first MACV didn't object to Kurtz's tactics, especially as they proved successful, but this soon changed when Kurtz allowed photographs of his atrocities to be released to the world. In late 1968, when Kurtz failed to respond to MACV's repeated orders to return to Da Nang
Da Nang
Đà Nẵng , occasionally Danang, is a major port city in the South Central Coast of Vietnam, on the coast of the South China Sea at the mouth of the Han River. It is the commercial and educational center of Central Vietnam; its well-sheltered, easily accessible port and its location on the path of...
and resign his command after he ordered the summary execution of four South Vietnamese intelligence agents whom he suspected of being double agents for the Viet Cong, the MACV sent a "Green Beret" Captain named Richard Colby to bring Kurtz back from Cambodia. Colby joined up with Kurtz instead of bringing him back to Da Nang, either because he was brainwashed or because he felt a sympathy to Kurtz's cause.
With Colby's failure, MACV then selected Captain Benjamin L. Willard
Benjamin L. Willard
Captain Benjamin L. Willard is a fictional character and the main protagonist in Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now, and is portrayed by American actor Martin Sheen. His character is loosely based on the character Charles Marlow from Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness. He is a...
, a former paratrooper and now a CIA assassin, to journey up the Nung river and kill Kurtz. Willard succeeds with his mission only because Kurtz, himself broken mentally by the savage war he wages, wants Willard to kill him and release him from his own suffering. Before Willard kills him, Kurtz asks Willard to find Kurtz's wife and son and explain truthfully what he'd done in the war.
Inspiration
Colonel Kurtz is based on the character of a 19th century ivory trader, also called KurtzKurtz (Heart of Darkness)
Mr. Kurtz is a central fictional character in Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness. A trader of ivory in Africa and commander of a trading post, he monopolises his position as a demigod among native Africans. Kurtz meets with the protagonist, Marlow, who returns him to the coast via steamboat...
, from the novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1903 publication, it appeared as a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine. It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" and part of the Western canon.The story centres on Charles...
by Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
. However, the character is widely believed to have been modeled after Tony Poe, a highly-decorated and highly unorthodox Vietnam-era Paramilitary Officer from the CIA's Special Activities Division
Special Activities Division
The Special Activities Division is a division in the United States Central Intelligence Agency's National Clandestine Service responsible for covert operations known as "special activities"...
. Poe was known to drop severed heads into enemy-controlled villages as a form of psychological warfare
Psychological warfare
Psychological warfare , or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations , have been known by many other names or terms, including Psy Ops, Political Warfare, “Hearts and Minds,” and Propaganda...
and to use human ears to record the number of enemies his indigenous troops had killed. He would send these ears back to his superiors as proof of his efforts deep inside Laos
Laos
Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...
. Coppola, however, denies that Poe was a primary influence and instead says the character was loosely based on Special Forces Colonel Robert B. Rheault
Robert B. Rheault
Robert B. Rheault is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army Special Forces who served as commander of the First Special Forces Group in Okinawa, and the Fifth Special Forces Group in Vietnam from May to July 1969...
, whose 1969 arrest over the murder of a suspected double agent generated substantial news coverage.
Portrayal
When Brando arrived for filming in the Philippines in September 1976, he claimed he was dissatisfied with the script; Brando didn't understand why Kurtz was meant to be very thin and bald, or why the character's name was Kurtz and not something like Leighley. He claimed, "American generals don't have those kinds of names. They have flowery names, from the South. I want to be 'Colonel Leighley'." And so, for a time the name was changed under his demand. When Brando showed up for filming he had put on about 40 lbs and forced Coppola to shoot him from the waist up, making it appear that Kurtz was a 6-foot 6-inch giant. Many of Brando's speeches were ad-libbed and performed off the cuff, with Coppola filming hours of footage of these monologues and then cutting them down to the most interesting parts.Filming was put on a week-long filming hiatus so that Brando and Coppola could resolve their creative disputes. It is claimed that someone left Conrad's source text, which Coppola had repeatedly referred to him to - but which he had never read - the houseboat which Brando was staying in at the time. He returned to filming with his head shaved, wanting to be 'Kurtz' once again; claiming it was all clear to him now that he had read Conrad's novella.
Still photographs of Brando in character as Major Penderton, in the 1967 film Reflections in a Golden Eye, were used later by the producers of Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American war film set during the Vietnam War, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The central character is US Army special operations officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard , of MACV-SOG, an assassin sent to kill the renegade and presumed insane Special Forces...
, who needed photos of a younger Brando to appear in the service record
Service record
A service record is a collection of either electronic or printed material which provides a documentary history of a person's activities and accomplishments while serving as a member of a given organization...
of the younger Colonel Walter Kurtz.
Trivia
- Brando was paid a fee of $3 million for his work on the film, plus $70,000 for an extra day's filming.