CLASSIC or ANTIQUE? Battle Cry (1955)

 

                In the mid-50s the Marine Corps was looking to duplicate the recruiting success of “Sands of Iwo Jima”.  It thought it had the perfect movie in a version of Leon Uris’ smash bestseller.  Warner Brothers was looking for its first successful war movie.  It got Uris to write the screenplay and Raoul Walsh (Objective Burma!, They Died With Their Boots On, Fighter Squadron) to produce and direct.  The Marine Corps was very cooperative.  It allowed filming at Fort Pendleton and the Marine Corps Recruiting Station.  It provided thousands of extras.  Witness the numerous newly sheared recruits and the screen spanning marchers.  Although the Corps demanded that the movie be G-rated, it accepted PG.  Did the Marines and Warner Brothers get what they wanted?  Yes.  Did war movie lovers get what they wanted?  No. 

                The film follows a squad of Marines from leaving home to returning.  It opens with the men saying goodbye to loved ones and then starting the bro-bonding on the train.  When they leave, one mother yells:  “And if they don’t treat you right, come right back.”  We know this will be a cinematic heterogeneous unit because the narrator spells it out for us.  They consist of a “Texan with a guitar”, an All-American athlete, a hick, an Indian, a slum kid, a book worm, a womanizing lumberjack, a prankster, and a troublemaker.  They go through boot camp with a D.I. who calls them “meatheads” and “skinheads”, but does nothing to discourage young men in the audience from joining the Corps.   The mother at the train station had nothing to be worried about.   Future recruits can figure out the reality after they sign the papers.  Boot camp flies by with no montage, no hijinks, and no drama.  They all get selected for radio school!  And yet, they won’t be separated when they go to war.  Nor will most of them ever be shown carrying a radio.  Did I mention going off to war?  The movie starts in January, 1942  and goes all the way to 1944, and yet these gyrenes spend most of their time drinking and wooing.  The movie would have been better titled “Liberty Call”.  These numerous liberties allow three romances to develop.  Danny (Tab Hunter) has a fling with a married woman while away from his girl next door fiancé.  Nerdy Marion (John Lupton) connects with a hooker, but he doesn’t know she is one until she shows up on the arm of a buddy.  Ouch!  Lumberjack Andy (Aldo Ray) falls for a war widow.  In between the soap opera arcs, the guys visit Guadalcanal and Tarawa to mop up and then finally get to prove they are not just lovers on Saipan. 

                “Battle Cry” was a big hit with the American public.  It finished #4 at the box office.  Critics were kind to it with some even comparing it favorably to “Sands”.  For a war movie fan, such comparisons are delusional.  The movie has all the elements that appealed to mass audiences in the 1950s and leave modern audiences shaking their heads.  It is a history lesson to read about the vetting the Marines did to the script.  They attempted to make sure the Marines were depicted as Boy Scouts.  They succeeded to a large degree.  You want those extras and equipment, don’t you, Mr, Warner?  The big bar brawl is toned down, for instance.  (Oddly, the fight is with a bunch of waiters instead of other servicemen.)  They were less successful in having any reference to the Marines liking sex taken out.  Specifically, they did not like Danny sleeping with the married Mrs. Yarborough.  Recruitment trumped prudishness as the Corps backed down on that arc.  The Corps had no problems with all of the officers being depicted as what that mother would want for her son.  Join the Marines – it’s easy, except for the occasional long march.  And that builds character.  

                Character building does not come from combat, apparently.  The movie has about five minutes and it’s not like quality over quantity.  Walsh went to an island in the Caribbean to find a beach and unjungle-looking field to stage his big battle scene.  The Marines march in lines across a brushy field to attack Japanese who are out in the open!  Just like in the Civil War.  

                Apparently, 1950s audiences loved war movies with a high dose of schmaltz.  The characters are all stereotypes familiar from Old School small unit movies.  Credit is due for having two Native Americans as Navajo code talkers.  This good will is diluted by a scene where one of them is given a hot foot and he proceeds to hop around whooping like a savage from a Laurel and Hardy western!  Comic relief is provided by Justus McQueen as L. Q. Jones.  That’s right!  Justus changed his name after this movie.  He shines, but the rest of the cast is just so-so.  Hunter became a major star with this movie.  James Whitmore is fine as Sgt. Mac, but his presence is a reminder of “Battleground” – a much superior movie that similarly followed a squad.  But where that movie bonded the men in combat, this one tries to bond them through action far from a battlefield.  If you are a war movie lover like me, it’s clear which movie took the right approach.  I’m not saying I’m right about the quality of each, but consider the fact that one is well-remembered and the other is long-forgotten.

GRADE  =  D