Veterans on Film: The Making of “The Men” at the Birmingham Veterans Administration Hospital

The Birmingham Veterans Administration Hospital (BVAH) in Van Nuys, California, was the first stop for many World War II Veterans suffering from spinal cord injuries. In 1945, the War Department created a Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) Care Center at BVAH, then the Birmingham General Hospital, to help these Veterans with their post-war transition. Dr. Ernest H. J. Bors, M.D., led the SCI program and used holistic, multidisciplinary therapies designed to help paralyzed Veterans reintegrate into civilian life.[1]

Bors trained as a urologist in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and came to the United States in 1938. Upon the outbreak of World War II, Bors joined the Army Medical Corps and began working with Veterans returning from combat suffering SCIs. He developed comprehensive treatment strategies for SCI that remain influential into the present day.[2]

BVAH cemented itself in Hollywood history as the filming location of The Men (1950). Directed by Fred Zinnemann and written by Carl Foreman, the film tells the story of Ken Wilocek, a paralyzed Veteran struggling to come to terms with his disability and his need to accept help from others. Marlon Brando, in his first film role after starring in Broadway’s A Streetcar Named Desire, played Wilocek. Many of the cast and consultants for the film were doctors, nurses, and Veterans who were working and living at BVAH during filming.

Screenwriter Carl Foreman honed his writing skills as a sergeant in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, working with the legendary Hollywood director Frank Capra on training and orientation films. He wrote the script for Know Your Enemy – Japan, a World War II film describing the events leading up to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.[3] In preparation for writing The Men’s script, Foreman spent weeks with paralyzed Veterans at BVAH, accompanying Veterans to their therapy regimens and sitting bedside with hospital doctors and nurses as they worked with patients. Foreman’s script took inspiration from actual conversations he had with doctors and nurses and from listening to Veterans talk with each other during treatment and downtime, capturing real life scenes for the film.[4]

Nervous about using Hollywood actors in The Men, Zinnemann decided to cast the actual Veterans at BVAH for the film. These Veterans had undergone intense psychological experiences which he felt would lend authenticity to the movie and make a greater impact on audiences.[5]

When it came to casting the lead of the film, Zinnemann felt that Brando had the ability to bridge the gap between acting and truth as Ken Wilocek that other actors did not have.[6] Brando himself was so dedicated to the role that he spent the entire month before filming living like the paralyzed Veterans at BVAH. He remained in a wheelchair, performed all the same therapies as other Veterans, and went with them to visit the Pump Room, a bar a few miles away from the hospital. The Veterans at BVAH accepted Brando as a comrade-in-arms. Brando even managed to fool one of the hospital therapists. Not recognizing him as an actor, the therapist referred to Brando as a “D-10 patient,” someone who was paralyzed from the tenth dorsal vertebra downward.[7]

Zinnemann was particularly interested in the relationship between Bors and SCI patients, interviewing potential Veteran cast members about Bors’s gruff, no-nonsense demeanor. The Veterans felt that Bors (affectionately known as “Pappy”) was chiefly responsible for helping them return to as normal a civilian life as possible.[8] In The Men, Bors inspired the character of Dr. Brock, played by Everett Sloane. Sloane channeled Bors’s demeanor to encourage Brando’s Wilocek to persevere through his rigorous treatment and return to civilian life.[9]

One Veteran who played a key role in helping The Men accurately portray life at BVAH was Pat Grissom. Grissom served as Zinnemann’s lead technical advisor during filming. He originally received a farm deferment but entered basic training in the U.S. Army in 1943. While serving with General George Patton’s 3rd Army Division, Grissom was wounded in Germany on March 26, 1945, and later began his recuperation at BVAH. While a patient, Grissom became the fourth National President of the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA), an organization started by Veteran patients at BVAH. Involved with the PVA for over 55 years, Grissom was a major advocate for paralyzed Veterans and was a member of the Long Beach Flying Wheels basketball team, an all-Veteran paraplegic team that played wheelchair basketball across the United States.[10] When VA proposed closing BVAH in 1950, Grissom spearheaded a delegation of the hospital’s Veterans who flew to Washington in an effort to convince VA administrators not to close the hospital.[11] While his efforts were unsuccessful, it demonstrated Grissom’s dedication to his fellow Veterans at BVAH.

Ted Anderson was another chief technical advisor to The Men and the inspiration for the Ken Wilocek character. While leading a combat patrol near the German town of Dorscheid in World War II, a German sniper shot Anderson in the neck. Paralyzed from the waist down, Anderson recuperated at BVAH and assisted Foreman with the film’s script. Brando’s character suffers the same injury that Anderson did in combat and experiences the same difficulties adjusting to his new circumstances. Anderson helped Brando bring his character to life, describing Brando’s performance as so realistic that he felt as if he was “reliving a phase of his paraplegic past.”[12]

Another major Veteran actor in The Men is Arthur Jurado. Selected from 32 other Veteran auditions to play a leading dramatic part alongside Brando, Jurado served as a lieutenant in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Jurado flew more than 50 bombing missions over Europe, surviving the war without a scratch. While flying back to the United States, Jurado’s aircraft experienced a mechanical failure and he was forced to ditch his plane in the Atlantic Ocean, leaving him with injuries that confined him to a wheelchair. While recuperating at BVAH, Jurado enrolled in a physics degree program at UCLA and planned to become an electrical engineer. When Zinnemann and Foreman came to BVAH to interview Veterans for The Men, they were so impressed with Jurado’s optimism and attitude that he was cast as a co-lead in the film.[13] Hollywood studios were so taken with Jurado’s performance that they reached out to him for other film roles, though The Men remained his only film credit.

The Men highlighted the important work of Bors and VA in treating paraplegic Veterans by providing them with the skills needed to reintegrate back into civilian life. By putting real Veterans on-screen, The Men honors VA programs, disabled war Veterans, and the doctors and nurses who help them.

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[1] Donald R. Bodner, “The Bors Award: Legacy of Ernest H. J. ‘Pappy’ Bors, MD,” Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine 32, no. 1 (2009), doi: 10.1080/10790268.2009.11760746.

[2] William H. Donovan, “Spinal cord injury–past, present, and future,” Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine 30, no. 2 (2007): 85-100, doi: 10.1080/10790268.2007.11753918.

[3] Marshall Berges,”Home Q&A: EVE & CARL FOREMAN,” Los Angeles Times, January 15, 1978.  

[4] Fred Zinnemann, “On Using Nonactors in Pictures,” New York Times, January 8, 1950.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Gladwin Hill, “Grim Masquerade,” New York Times, October 16, 1949.

[8] Zinnemann, “On Using Nonactors in Pictures.”

[9] George W. Hohmann, “Obituary: Ernest H. J. Bors, MD (1900-1990),” Paraplegia 29 (1991): 277-279, https://www.nature.com/articles/sc199139.pdf.

[10] Patterson Grissom Obituary, Los Angeles Times, September 6, 2014, https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/latimes/name/patterson-grissom-obituary?id=17404212.

[11] Valley Times Photo Collection, Digital Collections of the Los Angeles Public Library, June 1, 1950.

[12] Ted Anderson, “Paraplegic GI Relives War in Searing Scene,” Los Angeles Times, Feb 26, 1950.

[13] “Paralyzed Vet Wins Top Role In ‘The Men,’” Valley Times (North Hollywood, CA), December 1, 1949.