A Few Good Men (play)
A Few Good Men is a play by Aaron Sorkin, first produced on Broadway by David Brown in 1989. It tells the story of military lawyers at a court-martial who uncover a high-level conspiracy in the course of defending their clients, two United States Marines accused of murder.
A Few Good Men
It opened on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre in New York on November 15, 1989, in a production directed by Don Scardino, with Tom Hulce as Lieutenant Junior Grade Daniel Kaffee, Megan Gallagher as Lieutenant commander Joanne Galloway, and Stephen Lang as Colonel Jessep. Michael O'Hare replaced Lang as Jessep later in the run.
Sorkin adapted his work into a screenplay for the 1992 film of the same name.
Source material and legacy[edit]
The play is based on events that took place at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in July 1986, though various details were changed for dramatic purposes. Members of Rifle Security Company, Windward Side, 2nd Platoon believed that one of their number, Pfc. William Alvarado, was a malingerer and had informed about a Marine firing across the border into Cuba.[3] In a retaliatory hazing (called a "Code Red"), ten Marines seized Alvarado, blindfolded him, stuffed a rag in his mouth, beat him, and shaved his head.[3] Alvarado was seriously injured, but did not die.[3] Of the ten Marines, seven accepted other than honorable discharges as part of a plea bargain, but three, including David Cox, refused to accept the plea bargain and went to court.[3] Cox was defended by Don Marcari. Cox was found not guilty of aggravated battery but guilty of the misdemeanor charge of simple assault. He was sentenced to time already served in the brig and returned to active duty.[3]
Cox was honorably discharged from the Marines in 1989. When he saw the film version of A Few Good Men, he was upset at the liberties taken with the event, most notably that the Marines in the case were dishonorably discharged, and considered suing the filmmakers. Cox disappeared in 1994. He was found murdered, along a riverbank near Medfield, Massachusetts.[3]