23 Facts About Colonel Kurtz

Colonel Kurtz is based on the character of a nineteenth-century ivory trader, called Kurtz, from the 1899 novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

Walter Kurtz was a career officer in the United States Army; he was a third-generation West Point graduate who had risen through the ranks and was seen to be destined for a top post within the Pentagon.

Colonel Kurtz later graduated from the US Army Airborne School.

On May 11, August 28, and September 23,1964,38-year-old Colonel Kurtz applied for Special Forces, which was denied out of hand because his age was too advanced for Special Forces training.

Colonel Kurtz continued with his ambition and even threatened to quit the armed forces, when finally his wish was granted and he was allowed to take the airborne course.

Colonel Kurtz graduated in a class where he was nearly twice the age of the other trainees and was accepted into the Special Forces Training, and eventually into the 5th Special Forces Group.

Colonel Kurtz returned to Vietnam in 1966 with the Green Berets and was part of the hearts and minds campaign, which included fortifying hamlets.

Colonel Kurtz located his army, including their wives and children, at a remote abandoned Cambodian temple which Colonel Kurtz's team fortified.

Colonel Kurtz employed barbaric methods not only to defeat his enemy but to send fear.

In late 1967, after Colonel Kurtz failed to respond to MACV's repeated orders to return to Da Nang and resign his command after he ordered the summary execution of four South Vietnamese intelligence agents whom he suspected of being double agents for the Viet Cong, the MACV sent a Green Beret Captain named Richard Colby to bring Colonel Kurtz back from Cambodia.

Willard succeeded in his mission only because Colonel Kurtz, himself broken mentally by the savage war he had waged, wanted Willard to kill him and release him from his own suffering.

Walter Colonel Kurtz has reached his, and very obviously, he has gone insane.

Ever since he was in the US Army, Colonel Kurtz was always a patriotic soldier for his nation, thinking on how to achieve victory in the Vietnam War by any kind of means.

Seemingly a kindhearted man, Colonel Kurtz eventually reached his "breaking point" according to Gen.

General Corman describes Colonel Kurtz to have originally been a good man, the kind of person who is filled with rational thought including the capability of seeing the difference between good and evil.

When he rose to power as the "God-King" of the Montagnards, Colonel Kurtz was treated like a Deity, using his extensive military training to form an army of followers and soldiers around him, eventually becoming a philosopher of war, reading poetry and quotes from the Holy Bible, leading him to be seen as truly insane.

Colonel Kurtz is based on the character of a 19th-century ivory trader, called Kurtz, from the novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

The movie's Colonel Kurtz is widely believed to have been modeled after Tony Poe, a highly decorated and highly unorthodox Vietnam War-era paramilitary officer from the CIA's Special Activities Division.

Colonel Kurtz would send these ears back to his superiors as proof of his efforts deep inside Laos.

Colonel Kurtz maintains the character was loosely based on Special Forces Colonel Robert B Rheault, whose 1969 arrest for the murder of a suspected double agent generated substantial news coverage.

When Brando arrived for filming in the Philippines in September 1976, he was dissatisfied with the script; Brando didn't understand why Colonel Kurtz was meant to be very thin and bald, or why the character's name was Colonel Kurtz and not something like Leighley.

When Brando showed up for filming he had put on about 40 pounds and forced Coppola to shoot him above the waist, making it appear that Colonel Kurtz was a 6-foot 6-inch giant.

Brando returned to filming with his head shaved, wanting to be "Colonel Kurtz" ; claiming it was all clear to him now that he had read Conrad's novella.