Based on E.M. Nathanson's best-selling 1965 novel, The Dirty Dozen, this 1967 film's cast includes several actual World War II vets: Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Webber, Robert Ryan and Clint Walker. It's also the film that famously ended the football career of Cleveland Browns running back, Jim Brown. When Browns' owner Art Modell forced 29-year-old Brown — who had appeared in the western Rio Conchos and an episode of I Spy before being cast in Dirty Dozen — to choose between football and acting, the NFL's then-all-time leading rusher retired from the sport.