THE LONGEST DAY "MOVIE PROP" PARADUMMY
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The "movie prop" paradummy from the 1962 war film "The Longest Day." Made of molded rubber and perfectly sculpted and painted. Very beautifully designed but it certainly looks nothing like any of the real paradummies used in WWII (real paradummies were far less detailed and made of either burlap or plain olive drab colored rubber.)
According to one of the Longest Day directors interviewed by this web site, these paradummy props were probably left in French film studio storage areas after the filming of The Longest Day. He said after that he has no idea what became of them. Because they are now so very rare, it is assumed that most were eventually destroyed by the studios, probably during a typical storage clean up years later, (or according to Mike Detrez, who owns one of these dummies, they were possibly stored until folks picked them up as souvenirs, and/or they simply fell apart from age after their rubber material dried, cracked or melted.) There are supposedly one or two of these floating around in European Museums and there are at least three others known to exist. One is in the private collection of well known Belgian Airborne Collector Mike Detrez. The second, which was heavily damaged from age or abuse (see photo below), was sold on ebay in November 2004 (even though the seller initially claimed it was an authentic WWII paradummy - a common mistake/misrepresentation!) The third was found in Europe in 2005, still in nice shape (see photo above.) If any other Longest Day dummies have survived from the early 1960's, they are currently MIA and this web site would be very interested to find out the details about them and get good photos of them for this site. |
