They also tried to be correct, but Woody Strode wasn't the only race faux pas. The lieutenant portrayed by Rip Torn was an American Negro. He didn't know that Hollywood didn't know, or maybe didn't care, that he was a black man, so when he was told his character would be featured prominently in the movie he assumed a well known black actor would be cast in the role. He took his family to see the movie so they could get an idea of what he went through in Korea to win his medals. Surprise, surprise. When the word got out you could hear the movie moguls shrug their shoulders all the way to Malibu. As Fred Allen once observed, "You could take all the sincerity in Hollywood, drop it into a flea's navel and still have room for an agent's heart." Does it make you wonder what else they got wrong? Or overlooked? Or made up as they went along?