United States Army Special Forces in popular culture
They continue to appear as both major and minor referents in popular culture — especially in movies and television — often serving as a shorthand signifier for a shady or covert military background for a fictional character.
Although the U.S. Army Special Forces were created with a low profile in 1952, and the green beret was not officially authorized, things changed dramatically with President John F. Kennedy.
He wanted to challenge Communist influence and wars of liberation in the recently decolonized Third World, and bolster pro-American regimes with the U.S. Army's own special forces and counter-guerrilla fighters.
The first Special Forces Group on Okinawa provided a number of troopers to act as extras in director Samuel Fuller's Merrill's Marauders (1961) and were credited at film's start.
Henry Fonda appeared in, and narrated, a 1962 "Special Forces" episode of The Big Picture series of U.S. Army-produced films that found their way to U.S. television.
In 1963, a Green Beret appeared in the episode "In Praise of Pip" of The Twilight Zone though the U.S. Army told the CBS television network to not name the Southeast Asian country where the story occurred.
The public was fascinated with this new type of soldier of the New Frontier, and the Army reluctantly gave journalists' access to many of Special Forces often top secret missions.
The U.S. Army agreed on the condition that Moore (then 38 years old) complete the Basic Airborne Course and SF training before being allowed to visit the Special Forces in South Vietnam.
Robin Moore successfully completed the courses and was allowed to live with the soldiers in Special Forces and their South Vietnamese, Montagnard, and Nung allies.
The album then featured an exciting account of the Battle of Nam Dong where Captain Roger Donlon received the first Medal of Honor in the Vietnam War.
[3][4] Wolper later produced The Devil's Brigade (1968) with Utah-based National Guard SF soldiers as extras, wearing attractive, but imaginary red berets.
The last third of the film is Green Beret expertise in a commando mission to abduct a North Vietnamese General who has been seduced by the sister-in-law of an ARVN Special Forces Colonel (played by Jack Soo).
The climax is a superb demonstration of combatives by former-Tarzan Mike Henry killing a horde of Viet Cong who attack him, even impaling one on a low tree branch.
Tom Laughlin made a highly profitable American International Pictures film called The Born Losers (1967) featuring Billy Jack, a half-American Indian former Green Beret Vietnam War veteran using his martial arts on a motorcycle gang.
The 1969 "Green Beret Murder Case" in which Colonel Robert B. Rheault and several of his men were tried for assassinating a Communist spy was used as a discrediting tactic against the Special Forces.
The novel focuses on the struggle Rambo faces when he attempts to return to civilian life following the end of his tour of duty in Vietnam, and he eventually turns to violence.
