Le Jour le plus long
Copy signed by the author on the first leaf.
This is the first edition, published just as filming had begun, in May 1961.
The Irish-American journalist Cornelius Ryan, in France for the start of filming, most likely signed this copy at that time. The book had already appeared in France eight months earlier, published by Robert Laffont.
Directed by Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki, Darryl F. Zanuck and Gerd Oswald — the latter responsible only for the parachute sequences — the film adaptation was an immense success, including in France, where it drew 11 million admissions. It remained the most expensive black-and-white film in cinema history until the release of Schindler’s List in 1993.
The screenplay, based on Ryan’s book, was written by Romain Gary, Erich Maria Remarque, James Jones, David Pursall, Jack Seddon and Noël Coward, with music by Maurice Jarre. The cast was extraordinary: Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, Henry Fonda, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Robert Wagner, Roddy McDowall, Paul Anka, Curd Jürgens, Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, Bourvil, Madeleine Renaud, Pauline Carton, Georges Wilson, and others.
President Eisenhower even served as technical advisor on the film, and was to have played himself. Daniel Gélin, for his part, was unable to play the role written specially for him by Romain Gary, due to a hunting accident. Notably, Gary contributed to almost all of the French scenes in the screenplay, particularly those relating to the Resistance.
The Longest Day was published in the United States in 1959, and in France at the end of 1960. It was originally meant to appear as early as 1954, to mark the tenth anniversary of the Normandy landings, but the documentation Ryan gathered — after nine years of research involving 49 war correspondents and more than 3,000 testimonies from soldiers, both Allied and German — prevented him from finishing in time. It took him four years of intensive work to research and write this account, which remains an emblematic testimony to the end of the Second World War.