Ten Tall Men is a 1951 American adventure film starring Burt Lancaster about the French Foreign Legion during the Rif War in Morocco.
[2] Credited as an associate producer, Robert Aldrich was a production manager on the film where he met Lancaster, which led him to direct Vera Cruz for him.
When his two comrades-in-arms who accompanied him on the mission, Corporals Luis Delgado (Gilbert Roland) and Pierre Molier (Kieron Moore), sneak food and water to Kincaid, he shares them with the Rif.
The experienced Kincaid tells the lieutenant that their only chance is to release him to lead a series of guerrilla hit-and-run attacks to delay the enemy for five days until the regiment returns.
Using his expertise in disguise and language, Kincaid finds out that the Rif leader, Khalid Hussein (Gerald Mohr), is marrying Mahla (Jody Lawrance) in order to cement an alliance with the other tribe.
The film was the first of a two-picture deal Columbia Pictures signed with Norma Productions, the company of Burt Lancaster and Harold Hecht.
Producer Harold Hecht and star Burt Lancaster then decided that "John Ford and other Hollywood operators have so effectively decimated the Apache population" that they hired writer A.I.