Telling the Story of General Patton

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"I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country."

Gen. George Patton (George C. Scott)

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There are some movies I will watch whenever they are shown on TV.

"Patton," which premiered on this day in 1970, is such a movie.

The first six minutes are iconic — George Patton addressing an audience of American soldiers. They are not seen, but I have heard that the scene was based on a real–life speech that Patton gave to an audience of soldiers during World War II. The first time I saw the movie, I assumed he was addressing cadets at West Point. Either explanation is plausible, I suppose.

As I say, it is an iconic scene. It established the movie as a classic right from the start. It also established the fact that George Patton always did things his way — and sometimes his way was, well, bizarre.

He wouldn't tolerate "yellow bellies." They were cowards, in his eyes, looking for a "free ride" in the guise of battle fatigue, and he wouldn't permit them to share the same hospital space with soldiers who had been wounded in battle.

A Christian, he believed in reincarnation. Early in the movie, he took his staff to the scene of an ancient battle — and insisted, in a conversation with Omar Bradley (Karl Malden), that he had been there.

He wrote poetry and designed uniforms for tank crews.

When enemy planes attacked the place where he was engaged in a meeting with his staff, he ran outside and tried to shoot them down with his ivory–handled revolver. Folks in the press of the day wanted to call it a pearl–handled revolver, but he corrected them on that. "Only a pimp from a cheap New Orleans whorehouse would carry a pearl–handled revolver."

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"'Patton' is not a war film so much as the story of a personality who has found the right role to play," wrote film critic Roger Ebert. "Scott's theatricality is electrifying."

I would agree with that. Scott was electrifying, and it was the story of a personality who "found the right role to play." But it is a role that is no longer available.

The last time I watched "Patton," I found myself musing about whether it would be possible for another Patton to come along — and I concluded that it probably would not be. He's like the old–style football coaches — Bear Bryant, Woody Hayes, Vince Lombardi — who were said to be molders of men. The times left them behind, and if a football coach rode any of his players today the way those coaches were known to ride theirs back in the day, that football coach would be out of a job and probably blacklisted.

There is something to be said for hard work and how it shapes character, and perhaps that is why drill sergeants did continue to get away with that kind of thing long after football coaches had to change their ways. But they can't get away with it to a great extent anymore without being accused of abusing their positions of power as well as the boys over whom they have that authority.

And generals, of course, probably can't get away with it at all. Certainly, Patton couldn't get away with slapping a victim of battle fatigue. He couldn't even get away with it then.

There is a point in the movie where the empathetic, human side of Patton could be clearly seen — when one of the American soldiers was killed in battle, and the audience saw Patton standing next to the caisson that would carry the body to a field for burial, and Patton's voice could be heard reading the letter he had written about the soldier's death. It reminded me of the grave marker that Tommy Lee Jones carved for Danny Glover in "Lonesome Dove."

"Splendid behavior," he wrote.

In "Patton," the general wrote in the letter that the soldier "was a fine man and a fine officer, and he had no vices."

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"Scott's performance is not one level but portrays a many–layered man who desires to appear one level," Ebert wrote. "Instead of adding tiresome behavioral touches, he allows us small glimpses of what may be going on inside."

Or perhaps German Capt. Steiger summed it up better when, by way of explaining Patton's battlefield strategy, he told Gen. Jodl, "Patton is a 16th–century man. ... Patton is a romantic warrior lost in contemporary times."

Such thinking may have been why the Germans tended to underestimate Patton. Perhaps he was right for the time — and Scott was right for the role — but I wonder if either would be possible today.

'M*A*S*H' Laid Foundation for TV Series

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"This isn't a hospital, it's an insane asylum!"

Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan (Sally Kellerman)

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Forty–five years ago, it was fashionable to ridicule the armed services. Mostly in the movies. TV still had a certain reverence for the establishment in those days, but it was mostly in movies.

To be fair, the military was an easy target. The mismanaged Vietnam War had already forced a president to voluntarily withdraw from a campaign for re–election four years after winning the presidency by an historic margin. Things were going so badly for the United States in Southeast Asia that Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, "Uncle Walter" to millions, made a rare editorial comment during one of his newscasts that the war effort was a lost cause. I knew many people who were skeptical of their government and the media, but they trusted Cronkite. I couldn't tell you how many times I heard, when I was a child, someone say, "If Cronkite says it, you can take it to the bank."

At times, it was true that the military leadership resembled the Keystone Kops.

But I guess the military has frequently been an easy target. Forty–five years ago today, the movie "M*A*S*H," which was adapted from a best–selling novel by Richard Hooker, directed by Robert Altman and later inspired a long–running TV series, made its debut. Its target was the Korean War.

If all you know of "M*A*S*H" is the episodes of the TV series that you've seen, you may want to adjust your thinking a bit before watching the movie. You'll recognize the characters — Hawkeye, Hot Lips, Radar — but the actors who played them (except for Radar) were nowhere to be seen on the TV screen.

In that sense, I suppose, it will be like a new experience. And, in truth, I guess it is a new experience. A different one, anyway. The TV series was great in part because it didn't try to do the work of a movie in 30 minutes. And the movie was great in part because it didn't try to be like a TV episode.

That seems so simple, but if you try to pack too much into a half–hour sitcom or too little into a 90–minute movie, you're setting yourself up for failure.

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Even so, film critic Roger Ebert wrote that "M*A*S*H" the movie worked because "it's so desperate. ... The surgeons work rapidly and with a gory detachment, sawing off legs and tying up arteries, and making their work possible by pretending they don't care. And when they are at last out of the operating tent, they devote their lives to remaining sane."

I never really thought of it that way, but I guess there is a lot of truth in that. There was more of a sense of desperation in the movie than there was in the TV series. The surgeons still had a flippant attitude, Hot Lips and Frank still embodied the military establishment, but both seemed more extreme in the movie than the TV series. Perhaps that was because the movie, having received an R rating, was shown to an audience that was assumed to be mature enough to handle the material. On TV, anyone of any age could be watching.

So things were toned down on TV. I suppose that was kind of problematic for the Frank–and–Hot–Lips affair.

As far as Hot Lips and Frank were concerned, their movie characters were similar to yet different from their TV characters. They were gung–ho in the TV series, but that really was mild compared to the movie. And their sexual relationship really had to be muted for the small screen — implied far more than it was actually shown.

They really were fighting a different war in the movie. And their holier–than–thou attitudes came through loud and clear.

"I wonder how such a degenerated person ever reached a position of authority in the Army Medical Corps," Hot Lips (Sally Kellerman) remarked at one point about Hawkeye (Donald Sutherland).

"He was drafted," replied Father Mulcahy (René Auberjonois).

For his part, Frank's religious zealotry was only hinted at in the TV series compared to his extremely overt religious behavior in the movie. The first time he was seen, Frank was teaching one of the mess hall boys how to read — using his Bible.

The next time he was seen, he was kneeling in front of his cot, reciting the Lord's Prayer, which he amended to include requests for God's blessing on the fighting men, the commanders in the field and the commander–in–chief.

"Frank, were you on this religious kick at home," Hawkeye asked, "or did you you crack up over here?"

I guess the TV series proceeded as if the movie never existed — or as if it was intended to function independently of the big–screen story. Otherwise, someone would have noticed that Frank Burns (Robert Duvall in the movie, Larry Linville in the TV series) was taken away in a straitjacket after punching Hawkeye in the movie, never to be seen again — until he showed up in the TV series. No one, not even Hot Lips, ever asked him about his time in custody.

You know, I guess Ebert wasn't far off the mark when he wrote of the frantic pace of the movie. In 1970, the makers of the movie most likely had no idea their movie would inspire a long–running TV series so the movie tried to tell viewers everything about those characters in a couple of hours — or, at least, everything that the original book told readers about them.

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The makers of the hugely successful TV series expected that the bulk of their audience would know the inside jokes about everyone, even though the TV cast was almost entirely made up of people who did not appear in the movie.

A few of the characters in the TV series — notably Corporal Klinger — were nowhere to be found in the movie. He was created for the TV audience.

Ring Lardner, Jr. won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Anatomy of a Mutiny

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"The first thing you've got to learn about this ship is that she was designed by geniuses to be run by idiots."

Lt. Keefer (Fred MacMurray)

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Sea adventures always seem to have fascinated moviegoers.

I'm not sure why that is so. Maybe it is because when there is a conflict at sea, the only choice is to resolve it somehow. There is only so much space to occupy; outside of that is miles and miles of ocean.

When a conflict occurs on dry land, there is always (well, usually) the option of going someplace else.

Things went very wrong for the fictional crew of the equally fictional USS Caine during a typhoon.

Before I say anything else about this movie, let me ask you a question: Which Humphrey Bogart performance do you think was his best, his most memorable?

Would you pick "Casablanca," which won Best Picture? Bogart was nominated for Best Actor, but he lost to Paul Lukas for "Watch on the Rhine."

Or would you pick "The African Queen," which was not nominated for Best Picture? Bogart won his only Best Actor Oscar for that one.

Would you pick a movie like "The Maltese Falcon" or "The Treasure of Sierra Madre," for which he was not nominated for Best Actor?

Or would you pick "The Caine Mutiny," which made its debut 60 years ago today? Bogart received his third and last (and perhaps most deserving) Best Actor nomination for it — but he lost to Marlon Brando for "On the Waterfront."

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For many reasons, I might be inclined to pick "The Caine Mutiny," which was a first–rate sea adventure. However, I have always seen similarities between the role Bogart played in "The Caine Mutiny" and the one he played in "The Treasure of Sierra Madre."

It may not be Bogart's best performance, but, for me, it may be his most memorable because the character is so different from the roles he usually played.

Bogart's characters were always flawed in some way. Sam Spade and Rick Blaine were in love with women they couldn't have — and they knew it. Fred C. Dobbs was consumed with the desire for wealth, and Charlie Allnut, well, he had more problems than can be mentioned here.

But even though they had personal issues, all those characters were self–assured. They could manage things well enough on their own. Captain Queeg could not. He had been under great pressure throughout his naval career, and the story of how he cracked under the strain of commanding a nondescript vessel was the story of the Caine itself.

At the heart of the story was a young, affluent ensign on his first assignment. He didn't care for the commander in charge and was glad when he was replaced by Queeg, who appeared to be more of a disciplinarian.

"Mr. Maryk," he said to Van Johnson, his executive officer, "you may tell the crew for me that there are four ways of doing things aboard my ship: The right way, the wrong way, the Navy way and my way. They do things my way, and we'll get along."

That was reassuring — temporarily — until Queeg's behavior brought his stability into question, particularly when he began rolling a pair of steel balls in his hand.

It was bad enough when, distracted by a crewman who was out of uniform, Queeg permitted the ship to go in a circle and cut its own towline. But later, when Queeg went on a preposterous search for strawberries that went missing, most of the crew began to doubt his stability.

At that point, three staffers from the Caine — Johnson, Fred MacMurray (a writer) and Robert Francis (the young ensign) — set out to report Queeg's erratic behavior to the admiral but thought better of it at the last minute.

Things reached a boiling point on board the Caine during the typhoon. Queeg froze under pressure, and Johnson relieved him of command — thus setting in motion a sequence of events that led to a court–martial for Johnson and Francis. They were represented by Jose Ferrer, who was reluctant at first. He admitted that he would prefer to prosecute.

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There were high hopes among the defendants when MacMurray's character was called to testify. He, of course, had been the one who had planted the idea of Queeg's mental instability in everyone's heads. He was a writer, they said. He had a way with words and would be able to explain to the court what it had been like on the Caine, but he wound up taking no responsibility. When he heard that Queeg had been relieved of command, MacMurray said, he was "flabbergasted."

That was a good word for the reaction of the defense, too. Later, when talking about MacMurray on the stand, Ferrer told the ship's crew, "You ought to read his testimony. He never even heard of Captain Queeg."

Ferrer's character had no choice but to put Queeg on the stand and ask him direct questions about his bizarre behavior. Queeg pulled out his steel balls and began rolling them in his hand while he testified. The point was made, and the defendants were acquitted.

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"The Caine Mutiny" was nominated for seven Oscars, but it took home none. That was unfortunate. Director Edward Dmytryk really deserved better than that.

Columbia Pictures, knowing this would be the last movie producer Stanley Kramer would make for the company, slashed the budget and relied on Bogart's reputation and the success of the book upon which the movie was based. The gamble paid off, but the financial restrictions under which he worked led Dmytryk to make — perhaps out of necessity — a great movie.

Bogart's acting achievement was only part of it. Johnson gave an astonishing performance as a foolish first officer whose intentions were good, and Francis was just as good as the naive and even more foolish ensign.

But I think that, perhaps, the most impressive performance was turned in by Dmytryk — creating a top–of–the–line movie for, essentially, bargain–basement prices.

M*A*S*H Almost Didn't Make the Cut

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Hawkeye (Alan Alda): Henry, you have no idea what it's like to share a tent with a guy who thinks he's all 12 disciples.

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In the history of television, I don't think there has ever been another series like M*A*S*H.

When M*A*S*H went off the air in 1983, it was one of the top three shows in the United States.

But most people forget that it languished at #46 in the TV ratings in its first season, which began on this day in 1972, and almost didn't make the cut.

Other shows have survived — some have even thrived — after sluggish starts, but M*A*S*H did so while writing its own rules and virtually ignoring conventional wisdom.

It often seemed to be searching for itself in that first season — not entirely content to play things for laughs, even though it was mostly billed as a sitcom.

And that apparent ambiguity almost led to its cancellation after that first season. No one really knew what it was, but the series was saved thanks to an impassioned plea from the wife of a CBS executive who liked the show — whatever it was.

M*A*S*H was always more than a comedy. It just didn't know how to achieve its mission.

Its first three seasons leaned toward slapstick, but, at the end of that third season, when Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson) left the series — permanently — when his character's airplane was shot down over the Sea of Japan, M*A*S*H truly began to blend comedy with drama and pathos to create some of the most imaginative half–hour episodes ever filmed.

Before Stevenson's departure, there were flashes of what was in store, even in the pilot episode, which largely introduced the cast to the audience.

That was when viewers first learned of Radar's strange ability to know what people were going to say before they said it.

They learned of Frank and Hot Lips and their torrid affair.

And they learned that Hawkeye and Trapper John were skirt–chasing, gin–swilling doctors, gifted in matters of medicine.

By the way, if you're a M*A*S*H fan, you probably think of actor William Christopher when you think of the character of Father Mulcahy, the unit's priest. And that is certainly as it should be. Christopher appeared in more than 80% of the series' episodes — only one appearance shy of matching Jamie Farr for third place in frequency of appearances.

And Christopher probably should have had that extra appearance — but someone else played Father Mulcahy in the pilot episode that aired 40 years ago tonight.

It really is a shame that Christopher wasn't in that pilot episode — since Father Mulcahy figured rather prominently in the story's conclusion.

You see, Hawkeye was trying to organize a raffle to raise money so his Korean houseboy, Ho–Jon, could go to the U.S. and enroll at Hawkeye's alma mater. The winner of the raffle would receive a weekend in Tokyo accompanied by a beautiful nurse, whose name (Lt. Dish) was mildly reminiscent of Pussy Galore from the James Bond series.

M*A*S*H could be irreverent and decidedly incorrect politically in those days before Saturday Night Live challenged so many television taboos.

For example, in the initial episodes of the series, Hawkeye and Trapper John (Wayne Rogers) and the smarmy Frank Burns (Larry Linville) had a black bunkmate, a doctor named Spearchucker Jones.

He disappeared a few months after the show's premiere — with no explanation given.

The natural assumption might have been that CBS received some complaints from viewers who were offended by the racist connotations of the name, but apparently, the character was a casualty of story accuracy.

The writers learned that there were no black doctors during the Korean War so the character was quietly removed.

Well, anyway ...

When the big moment for the raffle drawing arrived, Hawkeye had it all worked out for someone to win who would be sure to turn it down — Father Mulcahy.

A brigadier general, who had been summoned by a phone call from Hot Lips, arrived at precisely the moment that Mulcahy was revealed to be the raffle winner and bellowed, "Do I understand that the priest of this outfit has just won a weekend with a nurse in Tokyo?"

"It's a prayer come true," Hawkeye replied.

At that point, Hot Lips entered the tent, pulling Frank behind her. He had been wrapped in gauze and sedated to keep him from interfering with the raffle.

And Hot Lips delivered perhaps the finest line I have heard in a pilot episode.

"Those two," the exasperated Hot Lips sputtered, pointing at Hawkeye and Trapper, "they're ruining this war, for all of us!"

Fortunately for TV viewers in the 1970s, M*A*S*H kept "ruining" war for the next 11 years.