TRIVIA---THE GUNS OF NAVARONE starred Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn. and was based on the Alistair MacLean World War II novel. Carl Foreman (HIGH NOON, THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI) was the writer/producer.
David Niven, who had moved to Hollywood, returned to England and rejoined the British Army when World War II began. He was the only British actor in the US to do so. He volunteered for combat duty and served in the "Phantom Signals Unit" which he rarely talked about. During the Battle of the Bulge, US sentries, worried he might be a German soldier, asked him who won the 1943 World Series. He replied, "Haven't the foggiest idea, but I did co-star with Ginger Rogers in BACHELOR MOTHER!" Niven supposedly said about serving in combat, "Well on the whole, I would rather be tickling Ginger Rogers' t*ts."
In the introductory sequence, real combat film footage is used to show the guns of Navarone sinking a British warship. In reality, the footage shows the battleship HMS Barham exploding after being torpedoed by a U-boat in 1941.
HMS Barham video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdrISbwy_zIThe movie was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It won the Oscar for Best Special Effects. Ironically, in the opening scene, an RAF Lancaster bomber crash lands at an airbase, but the Lancaster flying in the background never moves.
In one scene, the commandos' fishing boat is boarded by sailors from a German patrol boat. The commandos blow up the German patrol boat which erupts in a massive fireball---but the fishing boat goes unscathed.
In reality, the German patrol boat was a Greek navy patrol boat on loan to the movie which really sank because the explosives used in the scene were too powerful. The Greek naval officer who was the liaison to the movie, was demoted even after the production crew repeatedly sent letters to the Greek navy insisting they were to blame for the sunken patrol boat.
In the scene in which James Darren and a German officer kill each other, the German officer was played by Bob Simmons, who was the stunt coordinator for most of the James Bond movies and played Bond in the trademark opening gun barrel scene.
Bob Simmons and Sean Connery in THUNDERBALL.
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