NEW YORK — E.M. Nathanson, whose best-selling 1965 novel “The Dirty Dozen’’ became the basis of one of the most enduring, if preposterous, World War II movies to come out of Hollywood, died April 5 at his home in Laguna Niguel, Calif. He was 88.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Elizabeth Henderson.
A New Yorker who moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1950s, Mr. Nathanson was writing for magazines, often about the military, when a neighbor in Hollywood Hills told him a story that would evolve into his first novel.
The neighbor was Russ Meyer, the filmmaker who later became known as King Leer for directing soft-core films featuring big-breasted women.
Meyer, who died in 2004, had been a combat photographer and cinematographer during World War II, and he recounted an episode at an Army stockade in England in which he shot a company of prisoners who were training, he was told, for a top secret mission behind enemy lines just before D-Day.
Mr. Nathanson was intrigued, and he set about doing the research for what he imagined would be a nonfiction book about the company. Unable to confirm that such a company existed, he nonetheless found a trove of information in court-martial transcripts and other documents about the men in Army stockades during the war.
From these, he created the characters for a novel that he called “The Dirty Dozen,’’ the title referring to a collective refusal to bathe or shave during training.
The company in the novel did bear a resemblance to a group known as the Filthy 13, a band of rambunctious, authority-defying paratroopers who were far better known for drinking than for washing up, who were in and out of the stockade, and who landed behind German lines just before the invasion of Normandy.
They were not, however, the murderers, rapists, and borderline madmen depicted by Mr. Nathanson, who always contended that his book was based on Meyer’s initial tale and his own imagination.
“Powerfully prosaic,’’ as Kirkus Reviews called it, “The Dirty Dozen’’ reportedly sold more than 2 million copies.
The movie, directed by Robert Aldrich, came out in 1967 and became a pop culture landmark partly for its virtually all-male cast, a mix of Hollywood stars like Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, and Robert Ryan; a pop singer, Trini Lopez; an athlete transitioning to show business, Jim Brown; and several actors who were becoming or would become big names — Donald Sutherland, John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas, George Kennedy, and Charles Bronson.
The irresistible plot turned the major in charge of the company (Marvin) into a sneerer at fatuous military authority and a harsh disciplinarian who nonetheless stood up for every man in his charge; the criminals, more eccentrics than psychopaths, turn out to be heroes when they blow up their target, a luxurious rest house for German officers.
The movie was nominated for four Oscars, and it was listed at No. 65 on a list of the “100 most thrilling American films’’ compiled by the American Film Institute.
Erwin Nathanson was born in the Bronx on Feb. 17, 1928. His father, Stanley, was a laborer; his mother, the former Ruth Goldberg, suffered from depression, and when she went into an institution, Erwin, age 2, was placed in a Jewish orphanage in Manhattan.
He lived there until he was 7, when he was sent to the Hebrew National Orphan Home in Yonkers, where he lived until he finished high school.
He had aspirations to be a journalist, and for a time he worked as a copy boy for Women’s Wear Daily and as a stringer for The Washington Post. He moved to Los Angeles in 1956.
His other books include “A Dirty Distant War’’ (1987), a sequel of sorts to “The Dirty Dozen’’ set in Asia, in which the same Office of Strategic Services officer who organized the criminal company finds himself in French Indochina fighting with local guerrillas against the Japanese; and “The Latecomers’’ (1970), about a psychologically deluded actor with a Christ obsession.
Also, “It Gave Everybody Something to Do’’ (with Louise Thoresen), a seeming memoir about a grotesque marriage that ends in murder (1974); “Knight’s Cross’’ (with Aaron Bank), about German POWs who turn traitor (1993); and “Lovers and Schemers’’ (2003), a fictionalized social history of coastal Southern California from the 1960s through the 1990s.
Mr. Nathanson’s first marriage ended in divorce. In addition to Henderson, whom he married in 1985, he leaves a half brother, Donald Nathanson; a son, Michael; and two daughters, Larisa and Adriana Nathanson.
Mr. Nathanson was known as Mick, the M in E.M. In an essay about his time at the orphan home, he explained how that came about: “I was nicknamed ‘Mike’ by my father. At the home I was nicknamed ‘Mickey.’ Once I had a girlfriend, more than 50 years ago, who liked “Mick’’ better, and so did I, so that’s who I became.’’
