My Favorite Year

I felt so bad about trashing the Peter O'Toole movie Lord Jim—I think O'Toole is "the finest man who ever breathed"—that I went scouring for an old review of another of his movies, and I found the one where he played a fictional version of Errol Flynn (featured Tuesday). Ya know, you watch a lot of movies and coincidences just happen...

My Favorite Year (Richard Benjamin, 1982) Surely one of the best jobs during the early 1950's was being a writer for "Your Show of Shows,"* broadcast live Saturday nights on NBC. Starring Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and Howard Morris, the writing staff contained such wits as Reiner, Mel Tolkin, Larry Gelbart, Danny Simon, his odd couple brother Neil Simon, Lucille Kallen, and Mel Brooks.** The work environment was so fondly remembered it has consistently been used as comedic inspiration. First, Reiner used it as the work environment for "The Dick Van Dyke Show." Neil Simon wrote the stage-play "Laughter on the 23rd Floor."*** And Brooks took the kernel of a script by Dennis Palumbo about a going-to-seed celebrity and his "minder" and morphed it into his remembrance of "Your Show of Shows," My Favorite Year.**** Brooks served as neither writer, nor director, but as Executive Producer, he completely re-imagined the film as this sunny, hilarious remembrance, dripping with nostalgia, of being a cocky kid in New York in the '50's working for a hit comedy show. 

"King" Kaiser (Joseph Bologna) is the high-strung, neurotic star of a network variety show, and one week it falls to writer's assistant Benjy Stone (Mark Linn-Baker) to "manage" movie star Alan Swann (Peter O'Toole) through the rehearsals and broadcast. Two problems: Swann's a perennial lush, and he's never acted before a "live" audience. Fortunately, Benjy is Swann's biggest fan and forgives a lot of bad behavior, but Swann's "bad boy" behavior, insecurities and inebriation keep throwing up barriers.

O'Toole was initially hesitant to take on the role of the Errol Flynn-like Swann (he was convinced by an odd coincidence--the date of Swann's death inscribed on a tombstone--in a scene cut from the film--was also O'Toole's birthday. He was, again, nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his performance. Richard Benjamin solidified his transition from actor to director with this film, which also featured Jessica Harper as the apple of Benjy's eye, Bill Macy, Anne De Salvo and Basil Hoffman as the show's writers, legendary composer Adolph Green as a producer, Lainie Kazan as Benjy's mother, Cameron Mitchell as a mobster unhappy with his portrayal on the show, and even former "Show of Shows" performer Selma Diamond in a small role. 

But the highlight is O'Toole's swashbuckling star. Looking gaunt and rheumy-eyed even when he's not plowed, Swann benefits from O'Toole's charm, crack timing and physical comedy—O'Toole can do a prat-fall and make it look deadly—but the actor makes the drama work as well. Swann's freak-out at being told he's performing "live" ("I'm not an actor! I'm a movie star!!") is both comic and tragic. And he plays off well with a sharp cluster of East Coast character actors. 

The all-pervasive air of nostalgia begins immediately with the opening of Nat King Cole's "Stardust" over animated credits, and continues to the last frame with a joyous semi-sadness. My Favorite Year works on so many levels--as a drama as well as a comedy, as a fond remembrance as well as a fond farewell. And any movie that has a decent role for O'Toole to show how good he is, dramatically or comedically deserves a place on any list of 'favorites." 

* To give you a glimpse of "Your Show of Shows" here's Carl Reiner, Sid Caesar, Howie Morris and Louis Nye performing a sketch called "This Is Your Story." 

And here's Errol Flynn guesting on TV's "The Colgate Comedy Hour" with Abbott and Costello

** And Woody Allen became a writer for the 60 minute version of the show, "Caesar's Hour." 

*** Coincidentally, when "Laughter on the 23rd Floor" was video-taped for PBS, it was directed by "My Favorite Year" director Richard Benjamin, and featured its star, Mark-Linn Baker. 

**** The original screenplay took place in the early 1900's, and Wyatt Earp was the personage to be "minded."

The Other Side of the Wind

Our Revels Now Have Ended
or
Tonight is for the Freako's and the Snoops, Lady

There is a story, but it might be apocryphal. What is definitely true is that Steven Spielberg bought the "Rosebud" sled from Citizen Kane for $60,5000. What is also true is that Orson Welles was a master film-maker always looking for money. It is said that Spielberg's purchase galled Welles that someone would buy memorabilia from one of his films, but not invest in a new one, but not enough that he couldn't strike back: "But" I said "Steven, we burned the sled!"*

Enough re-hashing of the process that brought about the release of The Other Side of the Wind—the film Orson Welles was working on since his return to Hollywood in 1970. The story's been told enough and we now have the product streaming on Netflix (with a limited release in theaters), so it's now possible to see what all the fuss—and the wait—was about.

The Other Side of the Wind is the story of the last day—July 2nd to be exact—in the life of a well-regarded film director, J.J. "Jake" Hannaford (John Huston), which takes place at a 70th birthday party for him, while he is filming—and trying to save—his current production, entitled "The Other Side of the Wind", an attempt to make a "with-it" youth film as his comeback.

Oh, very. It's the sickest story I've ever thought up in my life.

If Welles had completed his film as intended, it would have been celebrated for the radical way it was filmed and edited. Almost defying continuity issues, it was filmed in a variety of formats—35 mm color for Jake's film-in-progress, and a combination of color and black-and-white in different formats and grains for the party sequences—the conceit being that it's all "found footage" from different sources documenting the party for Jake—and for promoting the film.

For the most part, it works, although there are some intimate conversations that seem devoid of cameras in the vicinity that throws some cold water on the concept, and the film (as is) doesn't take much advantage of reactions to the cameras as an invasion—perhaps it can be explained away as ego by the participants, but you'd think some of them would be careful of what they're saying...or doing when they know they're being watched...and recorded.

The "found footage" is just one aspect of the film, its spine, as it were. The fact of the movie is that it is full-to-bursting with plot, sub-plot, and sub-text, so that it must have seemed a daunting task to corral so much...everything. It is chaos in the making and is at its best when it flies by in Welles' quick (even by today's standards) editing of the sequences. There are other segments where the cutting is respectful, even gingerly, to make sure that points are made. Whether this is part of Welles' blue-print or of the subsequent editors, one shouldn't speculate. One can't really know.

According to a young American critic, one of the great discoveries of our age is the value of boredom as an artistic subject. If that is so, Antonioni deserves to be counted as a pioneer and founding father. His movies are perfect backgrounds for fashion models. Maybe there aren’t backgrounds that good in Vogue, but there ought to be. They ought to get Antonioni to design them.

It's even difficult to decide what to focus on in one's appraisal of it: should one make more of its film-within-a-film, which Welles was using to parody the formless art-house flicks of the late 1960's-early 1970's? Dialogue-less (except for overheard direction by Hannaford via bullhorn) and nearly plot-less, and completely voyeuristic, it follows a woman of supposedly Native American descent (Oja Kodar playing "The Actress") as she leaves a steam-room, is seen by a guy on a motorcycle (Bob Random, playing actor "John Dale") and is followed into a discotheque, then into a car that turns into an erotic episode and finally follows the two onto an abandoned film-set. 

"The movie" is noticeable for its gratuitous nudity, mostly of "The Actress," but also of the "Dale" character—Welles did much the same thing with Kodar on F for Fake, his camera ogling his longtime companion, who was lover, co-conspirator, and muse (Welles gives her a co-screenwriting credit on The Other Side of the Wind)—and as much as Kodar's nudity is a reflection of Welles' fixation—and love—one must also consider the "Dale" character's nudity as also a fixation of sorts, but of Welles' subject, the director Hannaford, who "rescued" his star from the ocean and decided to make him a star of his film...as he has (we learn) with many other male actors...all of whom have decided to not show up for Hannaford's tribute.

He is all the big, macho, hairy-chested fellas...basically Ford, Huston, maybe with some Hemingway thrown in...it's all this big macho thing, you know, which I'm so fed up with, you know. Although I love it, I'm very ambivalent about it, you know, I love Ford and all, but I also think it's a lot of shit that he hit (Fonda)and I love Hemingway and I think it's a lot of shit. It's all that (laughs)You know. And I love this man.And I hate him. And that's what I think is so great about this story—I want to love him and hate him and show him in all that thing.

Hannaford's character is commented on a lot in reviews as auto-biographical (and Hannaford's professional circumstances can be compared to Welles), but he's really a combination, a polyglot of different people—as Charles Foster Kane was, really—of different artists with a macho bent: Hemingway, certainly (his death by suicide was also on July 2nd in the year 1961), but also John Ford, Howard Hawks, and others of the "old" directors whose behavior was overtly macho, while leaning more to the female side of things by nature. Ford's treatment of women was extremely sentimentalized and his favorite actress, Maureen O'Hara, had her suspicions about him, while many of Hawks' works has interesting threads of homosexuality through them, with his many women who were "one of the boys," his frequent emasculation of his male stars (particularly Cary Grant), and...well...ever seen Gentlemen Prefer Blondes? 

Hannaford is a man's man, but he doth protest too much. The story is that he sleeps with his actor's girl-friends to gain some control over them, but is that the reason...is that really the story...? The reason the picture is in some trouble is because it's in a shambles that might be unrecoverable. The reason? Hannaford's treatment of Dale has caused him to walk off the set and not return to work—they either have to re-shoot, with the film already in financial trouble—or carry on with work-arounds (one of the jokes of the film is all the many "Dale" mannequins being carted around as stand-ins for the film—Hannaford ends up shooting them...with a rifle...not a camera).

The hope is that Hannaford's reputation as a great director can secure finishing funds for his experimental film, even though it appears to be in trouble and not on a par with his previous work that is studied, written about, and lectured on by academics, film-buffs and students and by contemporary film-makers who emulate him, and, ironically, overshadow him in the film-marketplace. One of those is Brooks Otterlake (Peter Bogdanovich), a former critic-now-turned-successful director, who enjoys a revered reputation in the new Hollywood, surpassing his idol and mentor. But, who turns him down when he is outright asked for money. Hannaford eventually sees all of his partners and apologists leave him for other opportunities and abandon any sense of loyalty to him, like a mass-reflection of the turning of Prince Hal against Falstaff when he is made King, and refuting what he says earlier in the party: "We imitation Hannaford's have got to stick together."

I was thinking last night about what you told me about these old directors who can't get jobs. And I was thinking of those great conductors...who were at the height of their power after 75.It's why Lear is my favorite play. I think it's just terrible what happens to old people...and the public isn't interested in it. That's always been why Lear is a play that people hate. The only thing that keeps people alive in their old age...is power.

Hannaford puts up a good act, playing the part of the sage. But, his fear is that he's playing the Fool. As a director, he has absolute control—over those who choose to give it to him. But, the money-men are beyond his grasp, and once the money is unattainable, his control is, as well. He has contempt for the scholars and syncophants who fawn over him and use their cameras on him, as much as he uses his camera on others—Welles has sometimes talked about the effect that filming a location brings, that he considers it dead, empty, and no longer of use. These hangers-on are nostalgists, endlessly cataloging the past, with no regard for the future...or the present.

And that's intolerable for Hannaford. He has no truck with being held as a symbol, a relic, a legacy, a thing of the past, with far more yesterdays than tomorrows. Over the night, he puts on the show of the Great Director, but as the scotches are drained, and his choices become fewer as hope is lost, he cracks, becoming "Lear in Hollywood," trapped by his own character and the actions that stem from it.

The one member of the cast and crew who sticks it out for the showings of Hannaford's work in progress (the final site of which is a dilapidated drive-in theater) to the end is The Actress, who's still there when the dawn washes away the image on the screen. Is she there out of loyalty, out of vanity, or what? What is it? The movie engages the mind and leaves things ambiguously, other than Hannaford's fate (and even that leaves questions), but also the remanants or evidence left behind that is the film in its entirety.

One aspect of Welles' work has always been the startling way he makes you look at the world anew, (for me, anyway) as if seeing it with new eyes. That doesn't happen with The Other Side of the Wind. It's world is one of decay and destruction. But, it does stick in the memory and doesn't fade away, in a threadbare skein of ambiguity. It's been on my mind constantly, as I've been trying to unravel its complexities and aspects. In total, it does not seem to be a great work, a failed attempt—how much of this is due to Welles' conception or the ultimate piecing together of it is impossible to say. But, the details are vast in number and mysterious in implication. It cannot be ignored, dismissed or forgotten.

And its message is, as so many of the stories that Welles has told over the years,  a melancholy one: that art, career, life may be a temporary thing, as bright, brief and transitory as fireworks. 

Beautiful in its moment, yes, but fleeting.

* Quotes in the review are from Peter Bogdanovich's recordings of Welles that he made from 1968 to 1973 for his book "This is Orson Welles." What's neat about it is the audio-book presentation of it is the actual recordings.

Hell and High Water (1954)

Hell and High Water (Samuel Fuller, 1954) Sam Fuller was a tabloid journalist before he became a film-maker, and when he switched careers—after stints writing pulp novels and screenplays—he had his first big hit with a topical Korean War picture, The Steel Helmet. From then on, Fuller kept his eyes on the headlines for his subject matter in order to attract audiences in such of something new. It kept his already edgy film-making style on the bleeding edge of topical audience-grabbers.

So, you can hardly blame him when he starts his atomic-age spy adventure, Hell and High Water, with a literal bang—an atomic bomb explosion, created with a high-octane initial explosion inter-cut with government approved nuclear footage (carefully color-corrected, evidently, as the actual colors  might reveal atomic secrets via the boiling colors inside the conflagration.

That bomb blast is preceded by opening titles: 

In the summer of 1953, it was announced that an atomic bomb of foreign origin had been exploded somewhere outside of the United States. Shortly thereafter it was indicated that this atomic reaction, according to scientific reports, originated in a remote area in North Pacific waters, somewhere between the northern tip of the Japanese Islands and the Arctic Circle. This is the story of that explosion.

A French atomic scientist, Prof. Montel (Victor Francen) on his way to a conference goes missing at Orly Airport; the headlines around the world assume that he has defected behind the Iron Curtain. But one man is about to find out differently. 

Retired submarine commander Adam Jones (Richard Widmark) is traveling anonymously in Tokyo.  A former sub-mate recognizes him, but he brushes him off. $5,000 will do that. He's been wired the money as down payment for a job in Japan; what it entails he has no idea, but he's traveled there to find out. Instructions take him to a hidden base, where an eclectic group of officials and atomic scientists—including the missing Frenchman—have summoned Jones for a particular mission.

They've taken possession of a scuttled Japanese submarine to do some investigating of a remote island in the Bering sea above the Arctic Circle, where a Chinese freighter has been making frequent deliveries, and where a recent surveillance plane has been shot down. The pilot was a friend of Jones' so he's already hooked to take on the mission, plus, he'll get an additional $45 grand  if he pulls it off, but he has two demands—he wants his pick of his old crew to get the submarine into shape...and he wants it armed.

The first one he gets, but the committee, in a hurry to get going because that targeted freighter has once again sailed, doesn't give Jones the time to test the torpedo tubes...or, for that matter, give the sub an extended dive test. Well, it wouldn't be a secret mission without some form of handicap. But, it doesn't stop the handicaps from increasing by taking on Marcel as an observer, and he brings along his assistant, Professor Denise Gerard (Bella Darvi*), whose presence is perpetually disruptive—initially because the crew-members of Jones' old command see her as a sign of bad luck for an all-male crew, but eventually, because she inspires a lot of unwanted attention, causing fist-fights and a general lack of focus.

The problem is solved by the Captain, by cracking down on his crew and placing her off-limits—to everyone, but himself, of course. Rank evidently has its privileges.

Fuller did his research aboard an active submarine, and he was able to use the relatively new Cinemascope widescreen process to advantage aboard the cramped quarters of the submarine sets, showing that it could be used for more than religious epics. One of the benefits of that research is in the using of red interior lights in a submarine—which were used to keep light from being emitted from a raised periscope and to allow crewmen's eyes on watch to adjust to the dark. It creates an eerie glow that Fuller uses to great advantage during one of the improbable love scenes between Jones and Gerard.

Fuller stages some nifty little underwater sequences as the sub plays cat-and-mouse games with a Chinese submarine and the freighter only to find that the island that it's going to is a feint for a second island, where there is a marked difference in detectable radioactivity and a secret that reveals a plot that would be re-run in the Cold War James Bond films of the '60's. 

This wasn't one of Fuller's favorite assignments or results, which he dismissed as "a sea picture where we never went to sea" (although Fuller is a clever magician with stock footage that you never know that, despite the set-bound nature of many of the set-pieces)—but it is fondly remembered—recycled footage was used in the "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" TV series and Steven Spielberg used it as research for 1941, and proudly showed Fuller a print of it in the trunk of his car when Fuller filmed a cameo for that film (as Fuller chortled in his autobiography).

Still, it is a diverting adventure yarn, with some surprises and shocks along the way, even if it's muted Fuller (perhaps because the original writer, Jesse Lasky, Jr. was allowed a re-write of Fuller's re-write of his script).  It is rare that you could call a film by Sam Fuller "a programmer" but Hell and High Water is as close as the man would come in his career.

* Fuller took on the assignment out of loyalty to producer Darryl F. Zanuck, who stood by the director after FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had strong, and censorious, objections to Fuller's Pickup on South Street. But, along with taking on the job, Fuller had to put up with some of Zanuck's casting suggestions—Bella Darvi being one of them. Darvi was discovered by Zanuck's wife Virginia—her stage name is a combination of the first syllable of the Mr. and Mrs. Zanuck's first names—who insisted she move into the Zanuck home after her divorce from her husband. Soon after, she became Darryl Zanuck's mistress. Widmark protested Davi's casting, but was overruled. Fuller did have a problem with Darvi's heavily accented English, so he used Zanuck's tric of calling in a favor, employing his frequent co-star Gene Evans to function as her dialogue coach.

House of Bamboo (1955)

House of Bamboo (Samuel Fuller, 1955) When is a film noir not a film noir? Well, director Sam Fuller shoved the envelope on that thriller sub-set as far as it could go with this crime drama set in Japan, filmed in Tokyo in Cinemascope and Deluxe color. A remake of The Street with No Name—same script idea by Harry Kleiner (who is credited), but a different setting half a world away, no FBI co-operation, but most importantly, different director—the two films couldn't be more different—although both films boasted extensive filming on location (the earlier film hedged its bets by filming in the grimier parts of Los Angeles, which it dubbed "Carver City").

Tokyo, on the other hand, was a bustling metropolis, something director Fuller sought to convey. This led to a change in casting; originally, Gary Cooper was slated to top-line the film, but he was too big a star not to avoid unwanted attention and ruin shots in crowded streets. So, Robert Stack was picked, as he was not so well known in Japan, and that enabled Fuller to film street-scenes from parked vehicles—to avoid paying filming permits—and get something that seemed authentic without autograph-seekers and the curious looking right at the camera.

The film begins with a train robbery...but not just any train robbery. A military munitions train bound for Tokyo from Kyoto is robbed by a well-timed team of criminals, who are able to steal guns and rounds from Army guards and Japanese police. The heist is done with military precision and a "take-no-prisoners" attitude—if one of their own gets shot or injured on the job, there are no heroics, but are shot and killed on the spot. The Army and Japanese police have no leads, until a subsequent crime is pulled off with the very weapons that were stolen from the train robbery...and, despite the gang's shooting of one of their wounded, that hood, Webber, manages to survive...just long enough to blurt out his wife's name, Mariko (Shirley Yamaguchi), and give the cops a letter in his possession from an Army buddy named Eddie Spanier, who Webber has invited to Japan after he gets out of prison.

Sure as shootin', Eddie (Robert Stack) gets off a boat in Tokyo and makes his way to Mariko, after first trying to track her down with a dance company and then at a bath. She's scared that Eddie is actually part of the gang who killed her husband, but after telling her about the letter he sent, and showing her a photo of him and Webber together, she begins to trust him...and trust him even more when he tells her to lay low, lest his old gang-mates try to find her. 

Eddie, however, is  disappointed. That letter promised a job, but no way to contact the dead man's gang. He decides to freelance, and see how far that will get him. He goes to local pachinko parlor's and shakes down the owners for protection, garnering just enough to get him some seed money...and the attention of criminal Sandy Dawson (Robert Ryan), whose territory Spanier has managed to cross. When he tries to shake down another pachinko hall, Spanier—who also dabbles in the protection business—has him beaten up and crashes into a meeting with his gang to provide a warning to get out of Japan. And "sayonara".

Eddie doesn't scare that easily. So, Dawson has him framed for a robbery and arrested, thereby allowing the Japanese Police to get his rap sheet wired to them, and an insider at the force forwards the info to the mob-boss. Dawson's intrigued. Intrigued enough to invite Eddie into his gang of dishonorably discharged ex-servicemen. But, he has to met certain standards: he has to swear an oath of loyalty, and he has to clean himself up—get a good suit and stop looking like a bum. He's an Organization man now.

Truth is, he always was. Because Eddie Spanier is actually Eddie Kenner, an Army investigator sent to infiltrate Dawson's gang for the joint Military/Japanese Police investigation of that train heist in the opening. He recruits Mariko to be his "kimono girl" so that if he gets embroiled in gang activities, she can go warn the authorities about any jobs going down...and maybe she'll find out who killed her husband.

From then on, it's a cat and mouse game, Eddie playing along with the Dawson gang, Mariko playing along with Eddie, while the authorities hang back expecting word from an operative who could get smoked if he so much as twists his ankle during a job. Except something curious happens: during a robbery on one of Japan's docks, Dawson's crew comes under fire from the guards—one gets hit and is immediately shot, lest he get captured and can give evidence. But, then Eddie gets shot in the leg and just as he's about to be put out of the gang's misery, Dawson himself grabs him and helps him escape.

That's not S.O.P. for the gang and pretty soon, Griff (Cameron Mitchell) who is Sandy's "ichiban" in the group starts noticing that Dawson is favoring Eddie over him, and is wondering if he has lost his position and prestige. Griff is a hot-head, Dawson knows that, so right before a big raid, Sandy tells him he's out of the gang until he cools down. That job, though, is cut short when Eddie sends Mariko to tip off the police, and when Sandy's informant in headquarters lets the boss know that plans are set in motion to capture them, he calls off the operation in mid-heist, and thinking Griff tipped off the cops, sets out to personally exact revenge in one of the most abrupt and shocking murders in noir.

Fuller's direction in House of Bamboo is tight and formal, even in the scenes shot undercover in the streets, but never more so than in that assassination scene—all done in one shot as Dawson breaks in on Griff taking a bath and then shooting him point blank, the bullets going through the wooden tub, the water draining through the bullet-holes. But, the scene continues as Ryan's Dawson stares into the dead face of his former number one boy and tries to understand "why'd you do that, Griff? Why'd you betray me?" Stack may be the erstwhile hero in the film, but he's just stiff enough to be unsympathetic, whereas Ryan's mob-boss comes across as a competent, slick operator, well in command and capable of feeling betrayed.

That ups the stakes in the game that Kenner is playing because Dawson may be a cool customer, but any sense of betrayal turns him murderous, and once the bath-murder scene occurs, one is never certain just how unhinged Dawson may become where no one is safe. This is a far cry from the movie's source The Street with No Name, but Fuller has been playing fast and lose with that original story from the moment he kept Kenner's identity a secret. With the unfamiliar Japanese surroundings, and his manipulations of the original story, the House of Bamboo is, quite literally, a world apart from its origins.

DeForest Kelley caught in the shadows of The House of Bamboo

The last scene, a final reel shoot-out, makes it explicit: where The Street with No Name ended in a night-time chase and shoot-out in a warehouse, the one in The House of Bamboo takes place in an office building with an amusement park on the open top floor. There's no rushing around in the shadows; it all takes place in the open daylight overlooking the city on a preposterous merry-go-round around a world sculpture. Surreal and dangerous, it is an over-the-top ending to an exotic blend of dark and light, in bright eye-popping colors using a movie musical's pallete to a story of the dark side of society.

The History of John Ford: They Were Expendable

When Orson Welles was asked what movies he studied before embarking on directing Citizen Kane he replied, "I studied the Old Masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford."

Running parallel with our series about Akira Kurosawa ("Walking Kurosawa's Road"), we're running a series of pieces about the closest thing America has to Kurosawa in artistry—director John Ford. Ford rarely made films set in the present day, but (usually) made them about the past...and about America's past, specifically (when he wasn't fulfilling a passion for his Irish roots).

In "The History of John Ford" we'll be gazing fondly at the work of this American Master, who started in the Silent Era, learning his craft, refining his director's eye, and continuing to work deep into the 1960's (and his 70's) to produce the greatest body of work of any American "picture-maker," America's storied film-maker, the irascible, painterly, domineering, sentimental puzzle that was John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.

They Were Expendable (John Ford, Robert Montgomery, 1945) First things first: John Ford set up and shot the vast majority of They Were Expendable. He was adjusting a light on an elevated platform when he fell off of it, breaking his right leg. When a concerned M-G-M exec called Ford at the Florida hospital—they shot in Key Biscayne Florida—where he was in traction and asked when he was coming back to work, Ford barked back that he wasn't, that Montgomery was going to finish the picture. "First I've heard of it," Montgomery remembers thinking when he heard Ford say it (top-liners Montgomery and John Wayne drove him to the hospital at his insistence). Montgomery who had jitters about acting in the picture after serving in the Navy for 4 years, knew it wasn't going to be tough—all Ford had left were some close-up's of things already shot and he proceeded to "just think like Ford" and finished it up, except for the last scene which Ford directed after leaving his hospital bed against doctor's orders. So, that's why the co-directing notice at the top.

The movie didn't do well at the box-office; in 1945, when it was released right after V-J Day, movie-goers had become bored with the saturation of war movies in the theaters. And They Were Expendable told about the dark days of the Pacific War—after Pearl Harbor but before Midway and just after the evacuation of the Philipines—when things didn't look so positive. It might have been a case of battle-footage fatigue; the book on which it's based—"They Were Expendable" by William L. White—was a bestseller, and those who didn't buy the book might have read portions of it in Reader's Digest and Life Magazine. Plus, at the time of the book's events, the Japanese Navy was handing the Allied effort a severe whipping. Except for scenes where the crews' PT Boats achieve some sinkings in their few skirmishes with the Japanese Navy and the successful evacuation of MacArthur and his family, the command of Lt. John Brickley (Montgomery, based on Lt. John Bulkeley who received the Medal of Honor for his service) takes it from all sides: the Japanese Navy, which picks off the individual ships one by one, whittling their numbers and crews, and his own Navy that considers the small vessels capable of messenger duty and nothing more. 

The situation is frustrating enough that Lt. J.G. "Rusty" Ryan (Wayne) wants to transfer to destroyer duty and away from skippering "high-powered canoes", but keeps getting turned down. There's no doubting his devotion, though; during one run, he's injured but refuses medical care until he's finally hospitalized with blood poisoning, but only after he's been ordered to by "Brick." This does not sit well with "Rusty" in creasing his obstinacy, which doesn't ingratiate him with the hospital staff. Only one Army nurse, Sandy Davyss (Donna Reed)—after getting the brusque end of Ryan's frustrations—starts to break through his crust and the two begin an awkward often-interrupted romance.

Cribbing any munitions they can and keeping the PT boats together with spit and bailing wire, the boats manage to do some damage, but, at best, it's a stalling game, trying to keep Japanese forces from advancing, while the Navy rebuilds its fleet and repairs their carriers in the immediate aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack. But, it's merely staving off the inevitable as more men die and more island terrain gets occupied, getting ever closer to their positions.

But, it becomes clear that the inevitable cannot be forestalled. Evacuation of all the Navy men is impossible, and those that can fight are turned over to the infantry, to face death or capture. Brickley and Ryan are two of the few who are shipped off for reassignment of training and building more PT boats, guiltily leaving their commands to their fates.

It's an unconventional war movie—certainly serving its propaganda purposes showing the spirit of the Naval forces despite the merciless conditions (Ford was right in the middle of his duties overseeing films for the Navy as part of the war effort and his experiences on Midway Island during that battle informed a lot of the work on this film), but it's completely atypical for its time in that it is not a story with the confidence of a victorious ending. They Were Expendable—despite being released after the war's end with an Allied victory—shows the U.S. Navy still reeling from the Pearl Harbor attack and trying to "make-do" in any way it can, the top brass, used to its aircraft carriers and destroyers at the ready, having to regroup and re-think its strategy (and being none too quick about it) with further attacks and certain capture right over the horizon for the forces stationed there. Any victories are piece-meal and certainly not decisive in the overall scheme of things. And we see the men go from "spit-and-polish" regimentation to looking like bedraggled castaways, uniformity going by the wayside in its efforts just to survive.

Soon, it is difficult to tell Navy from Army or Marines, their PT boats taken away or having to be abandoned, the sailors transformed to infantry and ground troops, because that is what it takes to survive, if survive is what they hope to do in a war-zone. Ultimately, Brickley has to even abandon his men to their fates because...orders. It doesn't sit well with him, eats at him even if he does all he can to have them prepared on that small little island, but it ties in with the whole theme of the film of service...and sacrifice. With more sacrifices to come.

But, it's strange to put this in the "History" of John Ford, although it's essential that it be there. The events were only a couple years old when the film was made, but given Ford's time working for the OSS—especially in his time on Midway just before the attack—he had a feel for how Navy-men worked, spent their time waiting, and how they dealt with stress...or didn't deal with it, it is a document of the American history that Ford was starting to specialize in, even as it was being made. Ford's picture is sentimentalized a bit (it IS Ford, after all), but with its interrupted romance, the military conflict with no resolution, and lives left in the balance, it is also one of his most melancholy films, far from a Hollywood standard crowd-pleaser, let alone a gung-ho war-film, so it was far more unconventional and rougher than most American movie-goers were used to.* 

It is also one of his best films, done on a tight schedule, but still with the sensitivity and artistry that Ford—at his best—could command. It is essential viewing for anyone interested in John Ford and the History of John Ford.

Ford put everybody's rank in the service in the credits, both out of pride
and to get a dig at John Wayne and Ward Bond, who did not serve.
Ford, Wayne and Wead would work together again, and a scene from that film will be Sunday's Scene.

* Compare it to Howard Hawks' Air Force, released the year before. It's essentially the same time-frame, same area of combat, much more fictionalized, with a clear "boo-yah" victory in its story-line. We'll take a look at THAT one in the foreseeable future.