Coming Home After WWII

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A dear friend of mine (now deceased) was a big fan of Clark Gable, and I am sure she saw most of the movies he made — especially "Gone With the Wind," which was one of her favorite books as well. In fact, she spoke so highly of it that I purchased a paperback copy of the book when we were in high school. That book still has a spot on my bookshelf. I expect it to still be in my possession when I die.

I have no idea, though, whether my friend ever saw Mervyn LeRoy's "Homecoming," which premiered in May 1948.

If she didn't, she probably saw movies that were similar. There has never been a shortage of soap operaesque movies coming from Hollywood, and "Homecoming" really went the extra mile in that regard. Seldom did "Homecoming" fail to apply a cliché to its storyline.

The acting was good in spite of the material.

Gable played a surgeon returning to America from World War II. Ordinarily, he was a tough guy in his movies, but he was unusually sensitive in this one. Perhaps that was a result of Gable losing his own wife, Carole Lombard, in a plane crash six years earlier. Maybe that sensitized his performances in the years after Lombard's death, especially his performance in "Homecoming."

In "Homecoming," he played a surgeon who went to war not so much out of a sense of patriotism but a sense of duty. His real loyalty was to his wife (Anne Baxter) at home, but that loyalty was severely tested when he experienced a growing passion for his nurse (Lana Turner).

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It was long rumored that Gable had been having an affair with Turner at the time of Lombard's death. I don't know if there was any truth to that rumor. I do know that, while Turner was regarded as a great beauty, she played a decidedly unglamorous role in "Homecoming."

Of course, that may just be my personal opinion in the context of the film. Turner was always beautiful, but she seemed ignorant of that fact in "Homecoming."

Turner's character was the tough one, the one who knew what was best for all concerned. Gable was obsessed with himself.

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"Homecoming" was worth seeing because of Turner's performance. She didn't always play the tough one, but in this movie she did, and it benefited from that performance.

Positive Propaganda

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"Let me tell you something about my iron nerve, son. It's made of rubber, just like everybody else's, so it'll stretch when you need it. You know, people got a funny idea that being brave is not being scared. But I don't know. I always figured that if you weren't scared, there was nothing to be brave about. The trick is how much scaring you can take."

Humphrey Bogart

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When one hears the word propaganda, the initial response tends to be negative, I suppose. But that really depends on which side of the fence you occupy.

In the case of "Action in the North Atlantic," which premiered on this day in 1943, it is a positive thing, telling the story of the Merchant Marines and their contribution to the Allied war effort during World War II.

In 1943, of course, the war was raging, and the outcome was far from inevitable.

First–time viewers may be startled by the realism of the movie, given the fact that it was made long before computer–generated graphics came along. The black–and–white photography is a giveaway, though.

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The title was certainly no exaggeration with Humphrey Bogart's tanker being hit by a torpedo from an enemy sub in the first 15 minutes — and the action kept on coming.

Well, actually, it wasn't just Bogart's tanker. Bogie was the ship's first mate. Raymond Massey played its captain. Bogart, Massey and the other survivors bobbed around in the sea for 11 days before being rescued.

But the lure of the sea was too strong. The only home the seamen knew was their ship; when their ship was sunk, they felt compelled to find a new one, and before long they were on their way back to the North Atlantic.

Their ship was part of a convoy taking supplies to Russian allies. After it was attacked and essentially crushed by German submarines, Bogart played an important leadership role.

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There were many movies made about World War II — and many were made while the war was still being fought.

As far as I am concerned, the best part of "Action in the North Atlantic" was that it premiered less than 1½ years after the U.S. entered the war — so its makers felt obliged to remind viewers why America was involved. It's a good history lesson — and a reminder of what America has fought for over the years.

At the Academy Awards, Guy Gilpatric, on whose novel the movie was based, was nominated for Best Original Motion Picture Story — but William Saroyan won the Oscar for "The Human Comedy."

The Night MASH Almost Ended

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"I'll stick with gin. Champagne is just ginger ale that knows somebody."

Hawkeye (Alan Alda)

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We know that MASH was one of the most popular TV shows of all time. It lasted 11 seasons, and it was in the Top 10 — if not the Top 5 — most of the time.

But as it was nearing the end of its first season, the future was really in doubt. MASH ended the 1972–73 season ranked No. 46.

The episode that aired on this night in 1973, "Ceasefire," was written when the decision about a second season had not been made — so two scripts were written. If the show was canceled, the script in which the war ended would be used. If it was picked up for a second season, the script in which the ceasefire turned out to be a false alarm would be used.

It isn't necessary, I am sure, to say which one it was. MASH ran until 1983.

Anyway, on to the episode.

Gen. Clayton (Herb Voland) informed Henry (McLean Stevenson) that a ceasefire was imminent — but that was unofficial, he warned Henry.

Nevertheless, Henry couldn't keep news like that to himself, and before long the entire camp was celebrating. Radar (Gary Burghoff) went around the camp to get messages and signatures for a memory book. Klinger (Jamie Farr) proceeded to give away his dresses, figuring he wouldn't need them anymore, now that the war was coming to an end.

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But Trapper (Wayne Rogers) didn't believe it. He said this kind of thing always happens in a war, and he bet Hawkeye $50 that the ceasefire would turn out to be a phony.

In the meantime, Hot Lips (Loretta Swit) was putting up a brave front, telling Frank (Larry Linville) that he was not to worry about her, that he was to go back to his old life and pick up where he left off. "I'm not going to make any trouble."

Hot Lips apparently wanted Frank to say something like he would leave his old life behind and stay with her. But he didn't do that. He told Hot Lips he wished she could meet his wife. "You'd like her," he said. That wasn't quite what she wanted to hear.

For the first time, Hawkeye acknowledged that he had a wife — but he did so for a different reason. He did so to avoid having to commit to all the women he had been with at MASH 4077. This caused considerable social difficulties for Hawkeye when word spread through the camp that he was married with five children.

That wasn't true, of course. Hawkeye was a bachelor. He just wanted to avoid complications. It worked beyond his wildest dreams.

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While we're on the subject, this wasn't the final episode of the season for MASH, but it was the final appearance by Marcia Strassman. She was mostly considered Hawkeye's girl in that first season, but then she left the show and went on to become Mrs. Kotter on Welcome Back, Kotter a few years later.

Anyway, to celebrate the ceasefire, Gen. Clayton came to the 4077th, where a commemorative slide show was presented in Clayton's honor. It included shots of the general in his private moments — exiting the latrine and cuddling with Hot Lips.

Then the hammer came down. A communique was handed to the general informing him that the ceasefire was off.

Trapper had won his bet — and the show went on for another decade.

The Home Front at War

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"The ending is only the beginning."

Ray Collins (Mr. Macauley)

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Even when I first saw "The Human Comedy" as a child, I remember being struck by the many mythological references. My parents were educators so I got more exposure to that kind of thing when I was growing up than most of my contemporaries — even before I saw "The Human Comedy."

I didn't know all the myths, but I knew the references. I also didn't know that, while comedy in the modern sense refers to humor, the ancient Greeks knew comedy to be more dramatic, ironic in its nature — and that was how this story was told. It had its funny moments, but it was almost entirely a drama despite the apparently contradictory nature of its name.

The main character in "The Human Comedy" — which premiered 75 years ago today — was named Homer, which was also the name of the author of two epic books from ancient Greek literature, "Iliad" and "Odyssey." The story was set in the fictional town of Ithaca, California, which was based on the hometown of the author of "The Human Comedy," but the town's name was inspired by the books. Ithaca was also the name of the home of Odysseus, the hero of Homer's writing.

(There are some real Ithacas — most notably in New York — but the one in California was entirely fictional.)

Also, Homer's love interest in "The Human Comedy" was named Helen. In Greek mythology, Helen of Troy was said to be the most beautiful woman in the world — and the cause of the Trojan War. It was Helen's face that was said to have "launched a thousand ships."

Well, there is more, but I don't want to keep anyone from making those discoveries for themselves. Suffice to say there were many parallels between William Saroyan's novel and the stories from ancient Greece.

It would have been surprising if there weren't.

The book actually began as a screenplay that Saroyan wrote. Then Saroyan was fired from the film production and rushed to finish the book and get it published before the movie hit the theaters.

As I said, the story revolved around Homer (Mickey Rooney), a high school student who worked part time as a telegram delivery boy during World War II (his boss was played by Frank Morgan, who is remembered for playing Professor Marvel, the Wizard and the Gatekeeper in "The Wizard of Oz"). In that capacity, he often had to deliver news from the war to residents of the town. The narrator of the story was Homer's deceased father, played by Ray Collins.

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The news was often sad — notices that people had been killed on the battlefields of Europe or in the Pacific — and it took its toll on Homer's sensitive soul.

"The Human Comedy" was a sentimental flick about the effects of war on the home front. In many ways, it was a precursor to The Waltons — if not in its setting, certainly in its affirmation of basic human values — worthy of Frank Capra.

Capra didn't direct it, though. Clarence Brown did — and he was nominated for the Best Director Oscar but didn't win.

The movie was nominated for Best Picture and Best Black–and–White Cinematography, and Rooney was nominated for Best Actor; all lost.

Saroyan won the Oscar for Best Original Motion Picture Story. How's that for irony?

Duel in the South Atlantic

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I am no expert on war movies, but it has always seemed to me that "The Enemy Below," which premiered on Christmas Day 60 years ago, was the first war movie that really portrayed the opposing combatants equally.

Well, maybe someone told me that way back when, and I just think that I have always thought that.

And maybe it wasn't the first war movie to be sympathetic to both sides — just the first to be that way about World War II.

It didn't draw any conclusions — except that there really was no difference between Robert Mitchum, who played the commander of an American destroyer, and Curt Jurgens, who played the commander of a German U–boat. Their characters were men who were defending their homelands.

They didn't start the war. It wasn't personal. In civilian life, they may or may not have held strong political views. As civilians, they might have liked each other, might have been friends. In war, they had jobs to do, and they did them.

Mitchum's character was newer to the job than Jurgens' was. It was a new command for Mitchum, and he was about as new to the Navy as most of his crew. The destroyer was on patrol but did not anticipate any action.

Jurgens, on the other hand, was a career Navy man whose sacrifices for Germany — two sons — had been considerable over the years. The U–boat was on courier duty and was likewise not expecting any combat.

Nevertheless on the silver screen, the captains and their crews were engaged in a taut thriller in the South Atlantic in which a mistake could be fatal.

They didn't want to think about what they had in common. That would get in the way of what had to be done.

At one point Mitchum remarked, "I have no idea what he is, what he thinks. I don't want to know the man I'm ... trying to destroy."

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That's about as blunt as it gets.

(Incidentally, the slogan seen in the submarine — "Führer befiehl, wir folgen" — means "The leader commands, we follow.")

It's become a cliche to label something a cat–and–mouse game, but that is what this was. The analogy is apt.

In "The Enemy Below," both sides kept maneuvering until the final showdown. When the duel had been decided and the two captains caught a glimpse of one another, they exchanged silent salutes. Gestures of mutual respect.

It was that respect, perhaps, that led Mitchum to save the U–boat commander. Later, with the battle behind them, Mitchum's character offered a cigarette to his former adversary, who took it and remarked, "I should have died many times, Captain. But I continue to survive somehow."

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Maybe that is what the art of warfare really is — the art of survival.

Building a Bridge in Wartime

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"Do not speak to me of rules. This is war! This is not a game of cricket!"

Col. Saito (Sessue Hayakawa)

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Not all battles in a war are fought on a battlefield.

Set in World War II, director David Lean's "The Bridge on the River Kwai," which made its American debut on this date in 1957, was about one of the smaller battles that was fought during that war. And while there are legitimate doubts about the historical accuracy of the story, the message was unmistakable.

Alec Guinness took home Best Actor for his performance as the senior British officer at a Japanese prison camp who kept insisting that the Geneva Conventions excused officers from manual labor. The commandant of the camp (Sessue Hayakawa) was under a great deal of pressure. He had to build a bridge across the Kwai River in Burma to expedite the movement of Japanese troops and matériel. What is more, this strategic structure had to be completed by a specific date.

Time was of the essence so the commandant pressed every able–bodied prisoner into service, even the officers. The British officer balked and was punished repeatedly but refused to yield.

Thus the two men were locked in another war — a war of wills.

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For the commandant it was literally a matter of life and death; failure to complete the bridge on time would force him to take his own life in keeping with his moral code. But the British officer absolutely would not compromise.

Meanwhile a Navy officer (William Holden) and two others attempted an escape from the prison camp. The others were killed, but Holden, although injured, managed to get away. As he was recuperating, he learned that he had been assigned to return and destroy the bridge before it was fully functional.

What Holden's character did not know was that Guinness and his men were now working toward the completion of the bridge, not its destruction — and not because of the benefits the Japanese would derive from it but for their own pride and morale.

How it all played out is something no movie lover should miss.

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I heard it said once that there are no "war" movies, only "anti–war" movies, and sometimes I think that is true (although other times I am not so sure). The essence of being anti–war is to expose war's brutality, and the intriguing thing about "The Bridge on the River Kwai" is that it does that — but not in the way you might think.

When one thinks of the brutality of war, one is inclined to think of physical brutality. "The Bridge on the River Kwai" was more about psychological brutality.

It was a classic anti–war movie experience.

An Important History Lesson

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When I was in junior high, I was assigned to do a book report on Cornelius Ryan's "The Longest Day."

Looking back, I would have to say that the book was probably a bit beyond my years. I mean, I love history — I have always loved history — and I love a good story, but the book was a bit technical for me, at least at that time in my life.

I didn't know who most of the people in the book were. I guess I hadn't studied World War II or D–Day too much at that point, had no idea, really, of their significance in American history.

And in my mind, too, I suppose, that was my parents' war — but they had been children when it was fought. It was probably more my grandparents' war. Either way, I probably saw it as their history, not mine.

Perhaps that is how it is for everyone. Major events that have gone before belong to someone else. The current ones belong to whoever is coming of age, and generations to come will have their own. It depends on whose time it is, and even though it is technically true that a time belongs to all who live through it, it truly belongs to those who are coming of age, whose impressions are still being formed. For the most part the rest of us share ownership of that time.

But not always.

Remember Sally Field in "Forrest Gump" and what she told her son as she was dying?

"It's my time," she said. "It's just my time."

People tend to be more in tune to what happens in their times — and less so about what happens in other people's times.

But I guess I am slipping away from the point — which is that "The Longest Day" was a good history lesson, whether in print or on the big screen.

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"The Longest Day" had an all–star cast — so many stars I can't name 'em all.

In that sense it reminded me of "Tora! Tora! Tora!" the definitive dramatization of Pearl Harbor.

There were actors everyone should be able to recognize — Henry Fonda, Richard Burton, Sean Connery and John Wayne, for example — and others whose faces are familiar but you've really got to be past a certain age (or of a certain time, to return to my earlier theme) to know their names — I suppose Eddie Albert, Peter Lawford and Robert Mitchum fall in that category.

It also reminded me of "Tora! Tora! Tora!" in the sense that it was faithful to the facts of the story, which were dramatic enough.

It was filmed in black and white in a documentary style at a cost of $10 million. For nearly 30 years it was the most expensive black–and–white film ever made — until "Schindler's List."

The movie brought to life the story in a way the book couldn't do for me when I was 14.

I don't know how much of that story young people are taught in school today, but the parts I found the most compelling were the accounts of the tricks the Allies used in the battle with the Germans.

Like dropping mannequins with parachutes to deceive the Nazis into thinking an expected invasion was happening in an unanticipated area.

Or using an attractive young female bicyclist as a diversion to slip a wagonload of resistance operatives past Nazi soldiers.

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The last time I watched it I couldn't help thinking that the invasion of Normandy as presented in "The Longest Day" was probably the most realistic depiction of modern warfare committed to film until "Saving Private Ryan."

"The Longest Day" received five Academy Award nominations and took home two Oscars — for Black–and–White Cinematography and Visual Effects.

Across the Pacific ... or Whatever It Was

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Rick Leland (Humphrey Bogart): I never saw anybody like you; you never have any clothes on.

Alberta Marlow (Mary Astor): Well if anyone heard you complaining about it they would put you in a psychopathic ward.

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Did you ever hear of a novel that was written about 14 years before the catastrophic sinking of the Titanic that, in hindsight, seemed to foretell the disaster with eerie detail?

"Across the Pacific," which made its debut on this day in 1942, was kind of like that. Let me explain.

Originally "Across the Pacific" was intended to be about an attempt to thwart a Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. It was a work of fiction.

Then when the Japanese actually did bomb Pearl Harbor, the script was rewritten to make the location Panama instead. Now that wasn't as implausible as it might seem on the surface. Several years before the U.S. entered World War II, military exercises were focused on defending the Panama Canal, and those activities received considerable attention in the press.

But the first two–thirds of the movie emphasized the hot–and–cold romance between Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor, fellow passengers aboard a Japanese ship.

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And the script revision actually put all the action in the Atlantic and Caribbean. Never really got close to the Pacific.

I guess "Across the Pacific" was the original title — and, in spite of all the meticulous changes being made to the script, no one thought to change the title.

The script revision wasn't that meticulous, though. Director John Huston apparently had worked out an ending for the movie, but he was called up for military service, leaving it to his replacement, Vincent Sherman, to come up with an ending on his own.

Huston, by the way, thought Sherman's finish "lacked credibility," according to his 1980 autobiography "An Open Book." Maybe he should have shared his vision for the conclusion with Sherman before he shipped out.

At the very least he should have told Sherman how to resolve the predicament in which his filmmaking had left Bogart. If you watch the movie, I think you will agree that Bogart would have had to be Harry Houdini — or Indiana Jones — to get out of that one.

Yet somehow he did.

There were other problems with "Across the Pacific." For one, I have always had an issue with the casting of Astor as the female lead. Now, she was talented. I don't mean to imply that she wasn't. But I thought the role called for more of a beauty. Ingrid Bergman comes to mind. She combined great talent with great beauty.

Would that have invited comparison to Bogart and Bergman's classic "Casablanca"?

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Perhaps in hindsight. But "Casablanca" wouldn't have been on the minds of audiences in September 1942 because it wasn't showing on U.S. movie screens until two months later.

The actual cast did invite comparisons to "The Maltese Falcon," especially with Sydney Greenstreet reunited with Bogart and Astor. Greenstreet played an even more villainous character than he played in "The Maltese Falcon."

He showed up in "Casablanca," too.

By the way, Bogart, Astor and Greenstreet reprised their roles in a radio version of the story that was aired a few months later.

Rewriting a Wrong

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"How old do you have to be before you know the difference between right and wrong? Do you have to be 18 before you can own up to a lie?"

Robbie (James McAvoy)

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Sometimes people pay for mistakes all their lives — and sometimes people pay for mistakes with their lives.

"Atonement," which premiered on this day in 2007, was about both.

It was a rather complex plot, centering around Saoirse Ronan, who played a precocious 13–year–old aspiring writer from an upper–crust British family in the years before the outbreak of World War II. As the movie began, she had just finished writing a play and planned to put on something of a backyard production of the play starring her visiting cousins.

Mind you, when I say backyard, her family had quite a backyard. You could accommodate a sizable stage and a considerable audience there.

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Briony (Ronan's character's name) was, as people that age so often are, given to flights of fancy.

She also had a bit of a schoolgirl crush on the son of the family's housekeeper (James McAvoy), who was bound for Cambridge thanks to his mother's employer. But Robbie was attracted to Briony's older sister, Cecilia (Keira Knightley).

And one day Briony observed interaction between Robbie and Cecilia — from afar. Cecilia stripped to her underclothes, then plunged into a fountain pond, then re–emerged a short time later, all while Robbie watched. The audience later learned that it had been an entirely innocent act that, having been misinterpreted, went on to form the nucleus of other false assumptions and accusations that ultimately sent Robbie to prison.

Four years later Robbie was serving in World War II, having agreed to serve in the military in exchange for his release from prison. An older and somewhat wiser Briony was regretting what she had said and sought the forgiveness of her sister, discovering that she and Robbie had reunited and Robbie was on leave from the war.

They had a confrontation, and Briony agreed to have her testimony changed and the official record altered. But there was a problem. One of the cousins who had been visiting the house that summer had been sexually assaulted by a man she had not seen. Briony had initially claimed it was Robbie, having seen the episode by the fountain and read an explicit note Robbie had written while working on drafts of apologies to Cecilia for his behavior, but the assailant turned out to be a friend of Briony's brother. She had realized that when she saw the cousin marrying this man — which meant that she could not be used as a supporting witness for Briony's revised account of events.

And if Briony went to the authorities to change her story, she would be regarded as an unreliable witness. Robbie's name could not be cleared in the public record.

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But then the audience was thrown a curve.

And, with the noteworthy exceptions of the finales of "The Sixth Sense" or "Psycho," it just might be the best twist ending I have ever seen.

Briony, now in her 70s (played by Vanessa Redgrave), was being interviewed on TV. Apparently she had grown into a professional writer and was speaking about her latest book. It would also be her final book, she told the interviewer, because she was dying of vascular dementia, "which is essentially a continuous series of tiny strokes. Your brain gradually closes down. You lose words, you lose your memory: which, for a writer, is pretty much the point. That's why I could finally write this book; and why, of course, it's my last novel. Strangely enough, it would be just as accurate to call it my first novel. I wrote several drafts as far back as my time at St. Thomas's Hospital during the war. I just couldn't ever find the way to do it."

Briony explained that Robbie and Cecilia never reconciled. Robbie had died of an infection at Dunkirk and Cecilia died a few months later during an air raid.

Briony, who apparently never changed her hairstyle in the 60–plus years covered in the movie, had written the book — including that confrontation that never happened — to give them the happy ending they were deprived in life.

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It was an interesting twist on the traditional coming–of–age movies I have seen. The problem with coming–of–age movies is that too many of them treat that time of life as a magical mystery tour that sometimes features lapses in judgment. This story spanned a lifetime and addressed the kind of real mistakes that the young often make — and sometimes must live with for the rest of their lives.

And it contained a touch that, as a writer, I can appreciate.

It used the staccato pounding of typewriter keys as part of the score — largely because of Briony's determined development as a writer but also Robbie's hesitant typing of the drafts of his apology to Cecilia.

It was a very effective touch and probably deserved a special Academy Award nomination.

As it was, though, "Atonement" received seven Oscar nominations — and won for Best Original Score so I suppose it was rewarded for that.

Ronan received the movie's only acting nomination but lost Best Supporting Actress to Tilda Swinton.

On the Eve of War

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On the eve of any armed conflict, there is that almost surreal will–they–or–won't–they kind of period when the people whose lives (most of them, anyway) will be shattered by decisions they do not make and actions they do not take are cast into limbo. And they wait to see if, well, they will or they won't.

Then the inevitable happens, and they must adapt to the new situation. Sometimes it requires them to shift their attitudes and their beliefs.

"One Minute to Zero," which made its debut on this day in 1952, was about such a time in the early days of the Korean War.

Ann Blyth, who was 23 at the time, played an idealistic United Nations worker in Korea just before the outbreak of the war — a pacifist who rejected all the evidence around her that a war was imminent. Like all of us, her character was shaped by its experiences, and she had lost her husband in World War II. Like many others she believed the U.N. was the legacy of the Allies' victory in World War II and that its mission was to prevent violent conflict around the world. She mistakenly believed it would do so in Korea.

I don't recall if her character's age was mentioned in the movie, but it is likely that Blyth was playing a character at least a few years older. Blyth was about 16 when World War II ended.

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Robert Mitchum played a career military man who had risen to the rank of colonel. Experience had made him more pragmatic about the situation, and Blyth's character ultimately acquiesced.

Not to take a position in this, but it seemed to me that Blyth's character was eager to switch sides, perhaps a bit too eager. But that was in keeping with the rest of the movie, I thought. And it was in keeping with the times and the perceived woman's role in relationships, I suppose.

While I can think of several movies that managed to combine a good war story with a good love story in which characters didn't have to sacrifice principle, "One Minute to Zero" seemed to do little more than string together cliches from the better movies of its type — and the relationship between Blyth's character and Mitchum's character was a little too formulaic for my taste.

By and large, the females in the movies of that time yielded to the men in their lives on most things. I'm not suggesting that female leads in movies should arbitrarily take positions that are opposite of their significant others' simply to establish their independence. But neither should they go so far to the other extreme.

Perhaps that is something that was learned in that era — but is not always practiced today.

Early in the movie Blyth's character clearly had principles, but it didn't take much for her to shift to Mitchum's more pragmatic position that one had to fight fire with fire.

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I learned long ago that you really can't reach a conclusion based strictly on Academy Award nominations — and the class of 1952 is a good example of that — but they can provide some insight into the quality of a movie.

And "One Minute to Zero" received no Oscar nominations.

Take from that what you will.

Kubrick Crazy

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"These are great days we're living, bros. We are jolly green giants, walking the Earth with guns. These people we wasted here today are the finest human beings we will ever know. After we rotate back to the world, we're gonna miss having anyone around that's worth shooting."

Crazy Earl (Kieron Jecchinis)

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I've seen enough Stanley Kubrick movies that I am pretty sure I could identify one even if I stumbled onto one I had never seen before while I was channel surfing.

Some directors are like that. They use certain styles — for example, certain types of lighting or camera angles — in all their films.

If you've seen some of Kubrick's movies, you're bound to recognize things like shots that show as much of a room as possible, giving the shot unusual depth.

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Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket," which was first shown on this day in Beverly Hills in 1987, was like that. I first saw it on the big screen and knew who directed it long before I went to see it. But if my first exposure to it had been a few years later when it was showing on TV and I stumbled onto it when it was already half over, I'm sure I could still figure out rather quickly who had directed it.

I always thought one of the most telling signs that it was a Kubrick movie was the performance of Vincent D'Onofrio who played an overweight Marine recruit.

The character's weight was an important part of the story. The character was originally written as a "skinny ignorant redneck" but was rewritten as fat and clumsy instead. This required D'Onofrio to put on 70 pounds — the greatest weight gain for a movie role ever (eclipsing Robert De Niro's record of 60 pounds for "Raging Bull"). Physical transformations are big in Kubrick movies.

More telling than that, though, are facial expressions. And D'Onofrio, a weak–minded overweight recruit who was ridiculed mercilessly by his sergeant (R. Lee Ermey, a Marine–turned–actor whose name became a household word with this movie), finally snapped.

When the audience caught up with him in the barracks lavatory late one night, the expression on his face was one Kubrick's audiences had seen before — most notably on the faces of Jack Nicholson in "The Shining" and Malcom McDowell in "A Clockwork Orange."

But I've got to tell you. I thought D'Onofrio did Kubrick crazy best. Even better than Nicholson.

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D'Onofrio shot his sergeant, then shot himself so he wasn't a factor in what happened in the rest of the movie.

But there was plenty of Kubrick crazy in the second half of the movie.

The rest of the movie was about one of D'Onofrio's fellow recruits (Matthew Modine) and his participation in some of the atrocities of the Vietnam War at the time of the Tet offensive that essentially doomed the American war effort.

From what I have heard, just about everyone who served in 'Nam was at least a little Kubrick crazy — some more than others. And the experiences of the platoon with which Modine found himself in the city of Huế during the Tet offensive certainly seemed to bear that out.

In case you aren't up on your Vietnam War history, Huế was the site of one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the conflict. Fighting there lasted nearly a month. Thousands were killed or wounded on both sides.

It is always striking to me how violent the movie is — but, of course, you can't really make a movie about war that isn't violent, can you? And while it is tempting to criticize Kubrick for making an excessively violent movie, the nonfiction account of that war is filled with even worse.

It also occurs to me when I watch this movie that it must take a special mentality to fight a war. I suppose it has always been that way, even when the weapons in use were not as sophisticated as they are today (although the automatic weapons of today are certainly more efficient than the weapons that were used in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War). So many people are shot (graphically) in full view of the audience and the other characters in the movie.

I tend to put myself in the position of those other characters. Would I be able to carry on with an offensive after watching one of my best friends get killed in front of me? I feel like I would at least need some time to grieve before channeling my energies in another direction — so maybe it is a good thing that I was never called upon to fight in a war.

But in "Full Metal Jacket" — and probably in reality — there was no time to grieve, not even for Modine when a buddy from his boot camp days (Arliss Howard) was shot by a sniper and died in Modine's arms.

They found the sniper — turned out to be a young girl, probably in her teens. One of the guys in the platoon shot her and as she lay dying she begged for someone to end her life and her misery, repeatedly saying just two words — "Shoot me." Modine finally performed the mercy killing.

"Full Metal Jacket" was nominated for one Oscar — Best Adapted Screenplay — but lost to the big winner on Oscar night that year, "The Last Emperor."

Impossible Mission

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"I reckon the folks'd be a sight happier if I died like a soldier. Can't say I would."

Samson Posey (Clint Walker)

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I've been fortunate. I've never had to fight in a war.

When I was a kid, I guess I expected to be in a war. The war in Vietnam had been raging as far back as I could remember, and as I got older, I guess I assumed that my time to go would come in due course. I never really thought twice about it. But the war ended well before I turned 18.

If I had been in a war, though, I would probably assume that, if command wanted to attempt a truly extreme mission, they would want really extreme people to carry it out — you know, murderers, rapists and the like.

"The Dirty Dozen," which premiered 50 years ago today, was about such a mission — and such a unit.

In advance of the D–Day invasion, a select unit of the Army's worst was assembled for a special mission — to assault a chateau that was hosting a meeting of high–ranking German officers. By eliminating these officers, the Nazis' ability to react to the invasion of Normandy would be severely thwarted.

It was a hazardous mission, but these men were regarded as expendable. At best they had been convicted of crimes for which they had been given sentences of at least 20 years. Nearly half had been given death sentences.

If they succeeded in their objective, those who survived would be pardoned and returned to active duty, but few were expected to survive, successful or not. Their commander (Lee Marvin) repeatedly reminded them during their training that most of them would not be returning.

And that was OK, too.

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After all, if they died in this mission, they would die a soldier's death. On the other hand, if their death sentences were carried out, they would die by hanging — definitely not a soldier's death. Hanging is typically regarded as a criminal's death.

And in the meantime they would have to be fed, clothed and sheltered for who knew how long.

Of course, one would be just as dead either way. It was the method of death that would pass the final judgment on the life. Everything else was incidental.

At the time of its release some people criticized the violence in "The Dirty Dozen," and a pretty good case could be made that it was excessively violent, needlessly so, particularly at the end. But isn't that the nature of war? Isn't war — all war whatever one may think of the rationale for it — excessively violent, needlessly so?

When you get right down to it, war is messy, and the people who fight in wars don't always play by the generally accepted rules.

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"The Dirty Dozen" had an all–star cast, but some of the performers were more memorable than others — like Donald Sutherland and Jim Brown and Telly Savalas — and Ernest Borgnine, who played the officer who appointed Marvin and Bronson and provided them with the list of convicts they would train.

You know, the violence probably was a little over the line, but, as I say, war is messy, and the mission wasn't carried out by a Sunday school class.

A seemingly impossible mission calls for incorrigible people to carry it out.

'Mrs. Miniver' Is Dated But Still Relevant

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"I know how comfortable it is to curl up with a nice, fat book full of big words and think you're going to solve all the problems in the universe. But you're not, you know. A bit of action is required every now and then."

Carol (Teresa Wright)

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William Wyler's "Mrs. Miniver," which arrived in theaters on this day 75 years ago, occupies an elevated position in the history of World War II movies.

And it contains what was long the most intense battle scene I personally had ever seen in motion pictures (until "Saving Private Ryan" and its graphic depiction of D–Day). But its intensity was on a psychological more than visual level — which may still make it the most intense of its kind.

There may be no more powerful battle scene — and excruciating in its length and growing sense of claustrophobia — than the one in which the Minivers (Walter Pidgeon and Greer Garson) and their children huddled in a crude bomb shelter waiting out a German air raid. In the grand British tradition of keeping a stiff upper lip, they tried to pass the time with conversation about mundane topics — like knitting — while the tension from the hellish cacophony of bombs and bullets from outside built to an unbearable level.

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It was all the more powerful as an illustration of how war can touch anyone; it has no regard for age, race, gender or social status. The Minivers lived in the comfortable world of the upper class, a world where Mrs. Miniver could calmly go about her daily routine while her husband participated in the evacuation of Dunkirk, but they were brought to their knees by World War II the same as their cook and maid.

As the vicar observed in a pivotal sermon near the end of the movie, "There's scarcely a household that hasn't been struck to the heart.

"And why?" he went on to ask. "Surely you must have asked yourselves this question? Why in all conscience should these be the ones to suffer? Children, old people, a young girl at the height of her loveliness? Why these? Are these our soldiers? Are these our fighters? Why should they be sacrificed?"

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Aren't these the questions many ask today when people are dying in airports, at concerts and in restaurants and nightclubs rather than battlefields?

The movie hasn't aged particularly well, but the message is still a good one: War truly is hell and is not made less so by the knowledge that it was started by someone else. If there were plans to remake "Mrs. Miniver" today, the characters probably could use some work — Garson's character particularly seemed a bit naive, especially when she confronted the downed German paratrooper in her kitchen, but perhaps that illustrated how off guard many people were caught by the Nazi threat and the reality of war.

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Her daughter–in–law in the movie, played by Teresa Wright, seemed far more grounded in reality than Garson's character (who, for example, refused to permit Nazi bombing raids to ruin her roses — later in a climactic bombing raid that set up the vicar's sermon, a rose that had been nominated in a local flower show competition was named for Mrs. Miniver).

Garson did her part for the war effort propaganda that "Mrs. Miniver" really was. Her character was brave and noble — and in real life she did her part for the war effort at home, too, but Winston Churchill said "Mrs. Miniver" did more for the war effort than a flotilla of destroyers.

"Mrs. Miniver" received a dozen Oscar nominations and won half of them. The movie won Best Picture. Wyler won Best Director. Garson won Best Actress (and delivered a record–long acceptance speech). Wright won Best Supporting Actress (beating co–star Dame May Whitty). The movie also won for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Black–and–White Cinematography.

Pidgeon was nominated for Best Actor but lost to James Cagney in "Yankee Doodle Dandy." Richard Ney, who played Garson's son in the movie, became her husband the following year. The union lasted until 1947.

Healing the Wounds of War

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If a TV show makes it to its seventh season, it is likely to be running out of material.

But the writers for All in the Family were still hitting the ball out of the park in the show's seventh season as the Christmas episode that aired on this night in 1976, "The Draft Dodger," clearly demonstrated. It may have been the most poignant episode of that groundbreaking series.

In 1976, America's recently concluded involvement in the Vietnam War was an open wound for many Americans. It had been a divisive war, sparking much social upheaval, and it was no less so once America's participation had ended. My memory is that, more than a year later, people were still being judged by others according to their positions on the war.

On this night 40 years ago, Christmas Night 1976, the Bunkers (Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton) were hosting Christmas dinner for the Stivics (Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers), Teresa (the Bunkers' boarder played by Liz Torres), Archie's buddy Pinky (character actor Eugene Roche) who was a Gold Star father, and David (Renny Temple), a friend of Mike's who, unknown to most of the people at the table on that occasion, fled to Canada to avoid the draft.

David's presence was unexpected. He just showed up on the Bunkers' doorstep. It hadn't been his original destination. He had intended to see his father, but his father wasn't ready to face his son so David went to see his old friend. It was in their conversation that the audience learned he was a draft dodger.

David agreed to join the family for Christmas dinner after being assured by both Mike and Gloria that they would not spill the beans. That was easier said than done when Archie met David and asked him questions about where he lived and why he was spending Christmas with them instead of his own family.

Gloria ran interference for David, but their objective was helped considerably when the doorbell rang, and the audience learned that it was Pinky. Before opening the door, Archie cautioned everyone that if Pinky started talking about Stevie, that was his only son who had been killed in the war.

Pinky was still in shock over that, and Archie told his family that if Pinky started talking about his son, they should steer the conversation in another direction.

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During Christmas dinner Archie asked David if he had any Christmas memories to share. David's reply contradicted information Archie had been given earlier, and that led to the revelation that David was a draft dodger.

Archie found that very disturbing, and that sparked an argument between the conservative Archie and the liberal Mike, who asked Archie when he was going to admit that the war had been wrong. Archie replied that he wasn't talking about the war. He was talking about doing one's duty to one's country. That was a position with which many viewers no doubt sympathized in 1976.

Many other people in America sympathized with David. They believed the war was wrong and refused to participate in it. David wasn't the only young American who fled to Canada. There were tens of thousands of others. The conflict created a huge rip in the fabric of America.

Pinky asked Archie if he wanted to know what Pinky thought, and Archie responded enthusiastically, certain that Pinky would take his side.

But Pinky surprised Archie, everyone else at the table and the audience when he observed that both his son and David did what they thought they had to do. The difference, he said, was that his son wasn't alive to share Christmas dinner with them, and David was. If his son could be there, Pinky mused, he would want to sit down to dinner with David.

"And that's what I want to do," he said, turning to David and extending his hand as the audience burst into spontaneous, heartfelt applause. "Merry Christmas, David," Pinky said.

"Merry Christmas, sir," David replied.

Even today the memory of that moment has great emotional power. I have seen reruns of that episode from time to time. I have watched it with people who supported the war and people who opposed it. And what I have seen convinced me that, while they disagree on most things, nearly all Americans prefer peace to conflict, whether it is between nations or between people.

Given the choice and the opportunity to act on that choice, most people prefer whatever promotes healing and harmony, not whatever sows discord.

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On this night 40 years ago, All in the Family took a giant step toward healing the wounds of war.

A Too-Good-to-Be-True Good Guy

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"I ain't a–goin' to war. War's killin', and the book's agin' killin'! So war is agin' the book!"

Sgt. York (Gary Cooper)

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I've never been a big fan of war movies.

There are some war movies that I like, but they almost always involve more than shooting and explosions. I've never been much for splashy special effects. For me, a war movie has to tell a good story, preferably with some kind of redeeming quality to counterbalance the violence. It helps if the story being told happens to be true.

Howard Hawks' "Sergeant York," which was at the theaters 75 years ago today, was such a movie. In fact, I would hesitate to call it a war movie. It was about a man who had sincere religious beliefs that came into conflict with the laws and requirements of the country in which he lived. War was merely the subtext of the larger issues that Alvin York's story raised.

Really, though, it would have been hard to go wrong. It was a biography of a hero whose story really seemed too good to be true. The American Film Institute ranked the film character the 35th–most heroic character in movie history; AFI also ranked the actor who portrayed him, Gary Cooper, as the 11th–greatest actor of all time.

Given the fact that York was one of the most decorated American soldiers of World War I, a conflict that had been fought in the lifetimes of most American adults in 1941, it should be no surprise that his story would draw huge audiences, and it did. It easily cleared more than $16 million at the box office, more than four times the earnings of the runnerup, "Honky Tonk," starring Clark Gable and Lana Turner.

My mother was quite taken with the movie and frequently quoted her favorite dialogue from it. York's sister, played by 16–year–old June Lockhart, and mother (in an Oscar–nominated performance by Margaret Wycherly) waved to Alvin as he left to report for duty. "What are they a–fighting for, Ma?" York's sister asked. "I don't rightly know, child," her mother replied.

(I've known that dialogue most of my life, I guess. Mom repeated it so many times. She was like that about her favorite lines from movies. Sometimes she used funny pronunciations of words as part of her regular conversation. One of her favorites was using words spoken by Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies — but that's a topic for another time.)

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When the story began, Alvin York was a hillbilly from rural Tennessee who liked to drink and carouse. He needed motivation to walk the straight and narrow — and he found it in the form of a beautiful young girl (Joan Leslie). York set out to raise the money for payment on a prize piece of farm land, which he figured would seal the deal with this girl. But the land was sold to someone else so he went back to his old ways.

But he found religion, and it changed his life. His pastor was played by Walter Brennan, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor (but lost to Donald Crisp in "How Green Was My Valley.")

Because of his conversion, York was an unlikely war hero. He even tried to get out of serving by claiming conscientious objector status, but he was drafted anyway. During his training it was discovered that he was a superior marksman — a skill he had picked up hunting in the hills — and he was promoted to corporal.

York put his marksmanship skills to good use during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in 1918 when enemy machine gun fire pinned down his unit. With only a handful of men — and doing most of the work himself, picking off enemy soldiers from a sniper position — York captured more than 130 Germans.

He was a national hero and received the Medal of Honor — even though he always said his motivation was to save the lives of his men.

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As I say, the movie was a big hit at the box office. The story was heroic, but it was also helped by the tragedy of Pearl Harbor, which happened while "Sergeant York" was in theaters. I have heard that some young men went directly from watching the movie to local recruitment offices to sign up, so inspired were they by Cooper's performance.

Cooper won the Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of York.

The Battle Between Good and Evil on Navarone

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Mallory (Gregory Peck): Are you sure it will work?

Corp. Miller (David Niven): There's no guarantee, but the theory's perfectly feasible.

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No one would ever conclude that I am a fan of war movies. I grew up that way. My parents were decidedly antiwar when I was growing up, and I grew up believing as they did.

As an adult, I have amended my position, acknowledging that sometimes it is necessary to fight, but that doesn't mean that my attitude about war movies has changed much. I've never really been much for splashy special effects and explosions. I'm a writer. I like dialogue. Lots of it.

I do like some war movies, just as I do like some westerns and some love stories. Just not all of them. Not even most of them.

My overriding preference when it comes to movies of any genre is that the movie tell a good story. And that is what "The Guns of Navarone," which premiered on America's movie screens on this day in 1961, did.

If it had been one of those war movies where two sides just begin shooting randomly at each other for no apparent reason other than the fact that they represent two opposing sides in an armed conflict, it wouldn't have interested me. I'll grant you, that is how most wars seem to be fought. Still, I want a story, something that gives the movie context.

"The Guns of Navarone" was a fictional story about World War II, and it was a darn good story.

It was set with a real event as the backdrop — the Dodecanese Campaign, in which the Allied forces sought to capture the Italian–held Dodecanese islands in the Aegean Sea in 1943, a mission that failed — on a fictional island called Navarone. Specifically, it was based on events surrounding the Battle of Leros, the central event of that campaign. The Italians had installed two powerful guns on the island that controlled the seas, but they were captured by the Germans in the battle.

Using that as the inspiration, Scottish writer Alistair MacLean penned the novel "The Guns of Navarone," in which a group of commandos sets out to destroy the island fortress and liberate more than 1,000 British soldiers.

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Well, that's how it was in real life. In the novel (and the movie it inspired), there were 2,000 British soldiers. The British Navy planned to send in ships to rescue them, but first, those guns had to be neutralized. That's where the commandos came in.

Don't get me wrong. "The Guns of Navarone" had plenty of shooting and explosions — in fact, it won an Oscar for its special effects — but it also had a lot of dialogue that really told the story. (Carl Foreman was nominated for an Oscar for his adapted screenplay, but he lost to "Judgment at Nuremberg.")

Then, along the way, the movie's stars — Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn — kept propelling the commandos forward. Each brought a special qualification to the enterprise. Peck played a spy from New Zealand, talented at what he did but inexperienced as a leader; Niven was an explosives expert, and Quinn was a Greek patriot.

There were breathtakingly dramatic moments as the commando unit made its way to the objective. If you are part of the millennial generation and you've never seen "The Guns of Navarone" before, you may well see similarities between it and "The Lord of the Rings" when you do. The characters and circumstances are different, but the similarities are undeniable. Peck and Niven, in their quest for the guns, are not unlike Frodo and Sam in their journey to Mordor.

And both stories were about the clash between good and evil.

Awakening a Sleeping Giant

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I've made a life's study of history. It was my minor in college, and it's been a personal passion all my life.

Movies have been a passion of my life, too, and I always like it when the two converge. I like movies that are based on actual events — preferably significant ones — although I do enjoy learning about something I never knew about before. Just as long as I'm getting the straight dope. I don't mind fictional accounts, as long as the stories are true to the events. For example, I didn't really object to "Titanic," mainly because it didn't embellish the truth — even though it did tell a true story in the context of a fictional one. But the truth wasn't sacrificed.

Which is more than I can say about "Pearl Harbor," a success at the box office but a flop with the critics — in no small part because the fictional story set against the backdrop of the sneak attack took all the attention but failed to make the audience care about anyone in the movie — and it didn't contribute to a younger generation's understanding of what happened and why. Even though the audience knew — or should have known — what was going to happen.

No such problem with "Tora! Tora! Tora!" That account of Pearl Harbor, which premiered on this date in 1970, was absolutely committed to re–creating the attack down to the smallest detail.

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The audience realized early on how woefully unprepared the Americans were for the attack. One of my favorite moments in the movie comes on that fateful day — Dec. 7, 1941 — when E.G. Marshall, playing Lt. Col. Bratton, comes looking for the chief of staff, only to be told by his incredulous aide that he wasn't in his office because "It's Sunday, sir."

I watched this movie again a couple of years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. At the time of those attacks, I heard them compared, over and over, to Pearl Harbor; I heard that so much it became a cliche. But after I watched "Tora! Tora! Tora!" again, I had a change of heart. There were differences between the events, of course, but there were also similarities. Both involved determined foes who regarded the United States as a deadly threat to their existence. And, in both cases, the United States was either ignorant of or guilty of ignoring the gathering storm.

A big difference, of course, was that the 9–11 attacks targeted largely civilian facilities — with the noteworthy exception of the Pentagon. At least the Americans who were attacked in Pearl Harbor had the means to defend themselves — and many of them tried to do so. But the complacency of the perception of a routine Sunday morning prevented the counterattack from being very effective.

The attack was harrowing. In fact, until I saw the re–creation of D–Day in "Saving Private Ryan," I thought it was the most graphic depiction of battle — one–sided though it was — that I had ever seen.

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve," said Sô Yamamura in the role of Admiral Yamamoto. It was the most prophetic line in both real life and the movie.

I know little of the Japanese actors in the movie, which really isn't surprising since the producers deliberately sought actors who were not stars. I could write volumes on the American actors, though — Marshall, Jason Robards, Joseph Cotten, James Whitmore, Martin Balsam. Perhaps they were not regarded as A list stars at the time, but I would have considered them stars. Until I watched the movie again after 9–11, I thought Henry Fonda was in it as well. But he wasn't. I must have been thinking of "Midway."

The cast was top notch.

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But, really, what else would you expect from guys like that? They delivered — as they always did.

It was interesting that the movie did better at the box office in Japan than it did in the United States — which was probably why it took years for the producers to make back their $25 million investment.

"Tora! Tora! Tora!" was nominated for five Oscars and won one — Best Visual Effects.

Henry Fonda's Pursuit of Happiness

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"All right! Who did it? Who did it? You are going to stand sweating at those battle stations until someone confesses! It's an insult to the honor of this ship! The symbol of our cargo record has been destroyed, and I'm going to find out who did it if it takes all night!"

James Cagney

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After a lifetime of watching movies, I have reached a conclusion that may seem obvious, but it is truly amazing how few people really consider it before embarking on a moviemaking project. If they did, untold millions — perhaps billions — of budget dollars could be spared.

The best movies are the ones that honestly examine human conditions and traits (both good and bad) that are fairly common. John Ford's "Mister Roberts," which premiered 60 years ago today, was such a movie.

It was a clever twist on the end–of–the–war theme that has been done dozens of times, but there was much more to it than that. The Mister Roberts of the title was Henry Fonda, reprising his Tony Award–winning stage role as an officer on board a cargo ship in the Pacific at the end of World War II. The cargo ship was far from the action — so far, in fact, that it could just barely be regarded as being involved in the war at all — and Fonda's character craved action. So he was forever writing letters asking to be transferred, which were passed along as required by Navy regulations.

His problem was the captain of the cargo ship (James Cagney) consistently refused to endorse Fonda's transfer requests. Without the captain's endorsements, the requests weren't considered — and Fonda's character felt trapped, helplessly watching as the war seemed to be ending in front of his very eyes.

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Cagney's character took a heavy–handed approach to his job, and Fonda's character served as a buffer between the captain and the crew, always letting the men bend the rules. He had two friends with whom he shared quarters and frustrations — the ship's doctor (William Powell in his last movie role) and Ensign Frank Pulver (Jack Lemmon) who spent most of his time trying to avoid both the captain and work of any kind.

Although Mister Roberts was worried that he would never get into the war before it ended, he was unselfish in his relationships with the men he commanded. It was an unselfishness that went beyond merely bending the rules. Mister Roberts went behind the captain's back and requested liberty for the long–deprived crew, which was granted, but then the captain refused to permit the crew to go on liberty when they reached the port. Fonda confronted Cagney, who told him he would permit the liberty if Roberts stopped writing letters asking for a transfer, enforced the captain's rules and pledged never to reveal what they had discussed. Roberts agreed to the conditions — he didn't like them, but he agreed to them — and the liberty was permitted.

But the crew had been without liberty for a long time, and several crew members got a little boisterous, which led to their arrests by the military police — and the captain being chided by the port admiral. That didn't go down easily for the captain.

At the same time, the crew was baffled by Mister Roberts' inexplicable rigidity about discipline, and Cagney made them even more suspicious by implying that Roberts was selling them out for a promotion. They were even more confused by his refusal to take advantage of a new Navy policy that could make it possible for him to get a transfer without the captain's endorsement.

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Roberts' sense of urgency was heightened when news of Germany's surrender in Europe reached the Pacific. At first, he was despondent, realizing that the war was rapidly coming to an end — when he was inspired to throw a prized palm tree — a reward for the ship's cargo record — overboard.

And it was when the captain confronted Roberts — and their entire conversation was broadcast over an open microphone — that the crew understood what had happened.

A few weeks later, Roberts received an unexpected transfer. The crew had competed in a secret competition for the opportunity to forge the captain's signature. Before he left, the crew presented Mister Roberts with a homemade medal, the Order of the Palm.

Lemmon was appointed to replace Roberts as cargo officer, and he and the doctor received letters at the same time. The doctor's letter was from Mister Roberts, who wrote with enthusiasm about his joy to be aboard a destroyer. Then Lemmon's character read his letter, which was from an ex–classmate, who informed him that Roberts had been killed in a kamikaze attack shortly after mailing the letter to the doctor.

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It was an indication of how well written the script was that it could turn on a dime from comedy to pathos — and then back again as Lemmon's character fully assumed Fonda's role, tossing the replacement palm tree overboard (in spite of a new chain that was supposed to keep it securely in place) and then storming into the captain's quarters, demanding answers about movie nights on board ship.

If I didn't know better, I would have sworn Billy Wilder did at least some of the writing. But he had no connection to the original novel — or the successful play that was based on it or the movie adaptation that premiered 60 years ago today. Of course, it was also a credit to the considerable skills of the cast — especially Fonda, who was so good at being the good guy that, when he played a really bad guy in 1968's "Once Upon a Time in the West," many viewers who saw the movie were shocked.

"Mister Roberts" received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Lemmon, who won) and Best Sound Recording.