This widely hailed classic, generally regarded as Preston Sturges' best (and thought to have lost the 1944 Oscar for best Screenplay mainly because writer/director Sturges had to compete against himself and his own Miracle At Morgan's Creek), is one of those rare films that actually get better with repeat viewings.
We first meet Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith (Eddie Bracken) sitting alone and depressed at the end of a nightclub bar near the defense plant where he has been patriotically working since being discharged from the Marines for "chronic hay fever" shortly after enlisting to be like his Marine father (who won a Congressional Medal of Honor, falling at WWI's battle of Bella Wood on the day Woody was born). We see him, in what appears to be a regular practice, buying drinks and food for a group of six Marines, led by William Demarest in the role of his long life.
The grateful Marines get Woody's story out of him - that he could not face going home following what he viewed as his "disgrace," and wrote his mother (letters mailed by soldiers shipped abroad) that he WAS serving over seas, and released his girlfriend who he was sure wouldn't want someone who couldn't serve. Freddy Steele's "Bugsy," raised in an orphanage, is so outraged that Woody would cut himself off from the Mother he didn't have, that he calls Woody's Mother, telling her that her son's been discharged following recovery from wounds and is coming home - starting the "little lie" that rapidly snowballs in comic complications.
All six Marines (after first setting up the core situation by forcing their own uniforms and medals on Woody on the train home to pull off the charade for his mother) are such solid, grounding presences throughout the film packed with Sturges' regular team of character players from Ray Walburn as the opportunistic more than corrupt small town mayor to Franklyn Pangborn as the general factotum, that it is almost criminal that only a couple of them are credited by name. The film's chief leap of faith is that any Marine would violate regulations as to the wearing of uniforms and medals not earned - but Sturges the screenwriter bridges this gap neatly between Woody passionately struggling NOT to be caught up in the charade and the soldiers themselves becoming trapped in it.
In the end, in a film not remembered for its subtlety, Sturges' actual subtlety nearly works against him by neither making his justifications as up front and memorable nor his "bad guys" as deeply villainous as, say, a Frank Capra might have, but the warmth and essential nobility of the true "hero" shine through and make this something of value far beyond the time it was made for.
In 1961, the tale came a-cropper in a noble attempt to turn it into a Broadway musical with a book by Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H), a score by Moose (Peter Pan) Charlap & Norman Gimbel and direction and choreography by the great Bob Fosse (who was fired on the road in a dispute over his choreography!). The timing was off more than the content - half a decade later, once the Vietnam conflict had heated up and was still perceived as a noble effort (we were never told at the time that the war was to prop up a government which refused to participate in UN supervised popular elections when the French withdrew from their former colony because the nationalist general who led the drive for freedom - their George Washington - was sure to win), things might have been different. The demo recordings which survive are nice enough - but thanks to TCM and home video, the real deal is available and one of the best.
This is not a pro or anti-war film, it is simply a film set in wartime (and excellently capturing the home front of that time) which quite beautifully looks at the nature of quiet heroism. If you've never seen it, you should - if you have, it's worth another look. It's probably even better than you remember.
We first meet Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith (Eddie Bracken) sitting alone and depressed at the end of a nightclub bar near the defense plant where he has been patriotically working since being discharged from the Marines for "chronic hay fever" shortly after enlisting to be like his Marine father (who won a Congressional Medal of Honor, falling at WWI's battle of Bella Wood on the day Woody was born). We see him, in what appears to be a regular practice, buying drinks and food for a group of six Marines, led by William Demarest in the role of his long life.
The grateful Marines get Woody's story out of him - that he could not face going home following what he viewed as his "disgrace," and wrote his mother (letters mailed by soldiers shipped abroad) that he WAS serving over seas, and released his girlfriend who he was sure wouldn't want someone who couldn't serve. Freddy Steele's "Bugsy," raised in an orphanage, is so outraged that Woody would cut himself off from the Mother he didn't have, that he calls Woody's Mother, telling her that her son's been discharged following recovery from wounds and is coming home - starting the "little lie" that rapidly snowballs in comic complications.
All six Marines (after first setting up the core situation by forcing their own uniforms and medals on Woody on the train home to pull off the charade for his mother) are such solid, grounding presences throughout the film packed with Sturges' regular team of character players from Ray Walburn as the opportunistic more than corrupt small town mayor to Franklyn Pangborn as the general factotum, that it is almost criminal that only a couple of them are credited by name. The film's chief leap of faith is that any Marine would violate regulations as to the wearing of uniforms and medals not earned - but Sturges the screenwriter bridges this gap neatly between Woody passionately struggling NOT to be caught up in the charade and the soldiers themselves becoming trapped in it.
In the end, in a film not remembered for its subtlety, Sturges' actual subtlety nearly works against him by neither making his justifications as up front and memorable nor his "bad guys" as deeply villainous as, say, a Frank Capra might have, but the warmth and essential nobility of the true "hero" shine through and make this something of value far beyond the time it was made for.
In 1961, the tale came a-cropper in a noble attempt to turn it into a Broadway musical with a book by Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H), a score by Moose (Peter Pan) Charlap & Norman Gimbel and direction and choreography by the great Bob Fosse (who was fired on the road in a dispute over his choreography!). The timing was off more than the content - half a decade later, once the Vietnam conflict had heated up and was still perceived as a noble effort (we were never told at the time that the war was to prop up a government which refused to participate in UN supervised popular elections when the French withdrew from their former colony because the nationalist general who led the drive for freedom - their George Washington - was sure to win), things might have been different. The demo recordings which survive are nice enough - but thanks to TCM and home video, the real deal is available and one of the best.
This is not a pro or anti-war film, it is simply a film set in wartime (and excellently capturing the home front of that time) which quite beautifully looks at the nature of quiet heroism. If you've never seen it, you should - if you have, it's worth another look. It's probably even better than you remember.