Ten years after the end of World War II, Warner Bros. scored a box office hit
with Battle Cry (1955), their first financially successful war picture.
Ranked at number four among the top money grossers of that year, the movie,
directed by Raoul Walsh, was based on Leon Uris’s best-selling WWII novel, and
was adapted to the screen by Uris. Yet, despite the title, Battle Cry is
less a combat picture than a sprawling, episodic soap opera packed with
character vignettes and human drama. It is also a quintessential big budget
studio entertainment geared for mass consumption during the fifties,
highlighted by an all-star cast that combines gifted Hollywood veterans (Van
Heflin, James Whitmore, Raymond Massey) with up and coming actors and actresses
(Tab Hunter, Dorothy Malone, Aldo Ray, Anne Francis, Fess Parker). During the
casting phase, such well-known names as Paul Newman, Margaret O’Brien, Susan
Strasberg, Phyllis Thaxter and James Dean, were considered but eventually
passed over by the studio.
The story begins as a platoon of recently conscripted Marines enter boot camp
in January 1942 and the narrative follows their progress from training through
romantic entanglements and personal crises and eventually to the battlefield,
climaxing with the bloody beach assault of Saipan. Battle Cry invites
comparisons to other war pictures such as Battleground (1949) and Air
Force (1943) with its multi-ethnic collective of baby-faced recruits who
break down into the usual stereotypes of city slickers, country hicks,
bookworms, ladies’ men, and con artists – all thrown together as fellow
soldiers.
Typical of the era, unenlightened sexual attitudes and macho posturing abound
but the movie was merely reflecting the current ’50s culture and was never
meant to be a critique of the Marine Corps or an anti-war picture. If anything,
Battle Cry is a celebration of the military and Walsh was granted full
access by the Marines to shoot portions of the film on location at Fort
Pendleton and the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, both near San Diego. In addition,
Walsh had literally thousands of Marines at his disposal as extras which
accounts for some of the impressive battle scenes and shots of marching columns
of men.
Additional scenes were shot at the Warners Ranch in Calabasas, in the Simi
Valley and around the Vieques Islands of Puerto Rico. James Whitmore, who plays
the gruff Sergeant Mac, also provides intermittent voice-over narration and the
rousing music score by Max Steiner was nominated for an Oscar®.
One of the most intriguing aspects of Battle Cry is barely touched on in
the film version, according to notes from the American Film Institute web site,
which was referring to “the work of the World War II Navajo “code talkers,” who
sent secret radio messages in their native language, undecipherable by the
enemy. Although the recruits depicted in the film were sent to radio school,
and several humorous references were made within the story about off-color
limericks sent in Morse code, the battle sequences showed those characters
fighting as a squad with a battalion of foot soldiers.”
While Battle Cry palls in comparison to such classics of the genre as
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) or Story of G.I. Joe (1945),
it is often entertaining for its lively ensemble cast alone and the pulpy and
often unpredictable story arcs – some characters are simply dropped along the
way and we only learn about their fates through overheard conversations or
Whitmore’s narration. Among the cast Tab Hunter gives one of his better
dramatic performances as the All-American boy from Baltimore and, in his film
debut, L.Q. Jones (who is billed here as Justus E. McQueen), steals most of his
scenes as a wisecracking, fun-loving hayseed. Providing eye candy and sex
appeal are Dorothy Malone and Anne Francis, who enjoy brief romantic interludes
with Tab Hunter and John Lupton, respectively.
In many ways, Battle Cry was responsible for launching Hunter’s
popularity among the bobbysocker crowd and catapulted him into leading man
status. According to his autobiography, Tab Hunter Confidential, his
brother Walt inspired his performance to some degree: “The character of Danny
reminded me of Walt, an upright guy eager to serve his country. By this time,
my brother had already been in the Navy for five years. Since I’d emulated Walt
all through childhood, it wouldn’t be a stretch to base my performance on him.
There was plenty of me in there, too.” Hunter also recalled the movie’s
filming, noting that “A planeload of Hollywood soldiers stormed Vieques, Puerto
Rico, on February 17, 1954. The island was twenty miles long, five miles wide,
and had only three towns. The battalion lived in a tent city, nicknamed Camp
Hollywood, where we shared cold showers and outdoor latrines. It teemed with
scorpions, field mice and billions of mosquitoes. Thankfully, the schedule
called for only eighteen days of location work.” As for his co-stars, Hunter
said that “Aldo [Ray] emerged as the leader of the dogfaces. He formed an ad
hoc drinking society called the FEOLOs, which stood for “F*ck Everybody or Lose
Out.” He’d captain evening forays into Isabel Segunda, a grungy little town at
the tip of the island with a two-pronged economy: bars and whores.”
From all reports, Battle Cry was well into production before a completed
script was ever delivered to the actors, a situation that led professionals
like Van Heflin and James Whitmore to voice their concerns to director Walsh,
who encouraged the more experienced actors to make up incidental dialogue as
they went along. Rainy weather also contributed to delays in the shooting
schedule and eventually Battle Cry‘s original release date was pushed
back to allow for the necessary post-production but also because the Marine
Corps convinced Warner Bros. if the film was released in April or May, when
enlistment was usually down, it would boost recruitment.
Prior to the film’s release, the Marine Corps did cite a problem they had with
the film, according to Tab Hunter, “specifically the affair between Dorothy
Malone and me. An internal studio memo said: “The Corps feels that Danny
Forrester represents an idealistic type of boy…the type of youth they hope to
appeal to. Showing him as an eighteen-year-old, humping a married woman twice
his age, will have many detrimental aftermaths.” Hunter was afraid that some of
his best scenes would end up on the cutting room floor but, “In the end, the
humping stayed in Battle Cry. After it was previewed for the Defense
Department, Raoul Walsh received a letter of commendation: “This is the best
Marine picture ever made. Your guys look like real fighting men, not Hollywood
actors. In the last five or six Hollywood pictures, they’ve made the Marine
Corps look ridiculous.”
Battle Cry‘s reception was mixed with some critics calling attention to
the fact that the real war footage was not well integrated into the
Cinemascope-lensed studio scenes and that the combat sequences lacked realism
due to the obvious “unmussed uniforms and unscathed equipment” of the soldiers.
The Hollywood Reporter called it “a great women’s picture” and
Variety noted that, “While overboard in length, this comes from the
detailing of several sets of romantics, each interesting in itself, plus the
necessary battle action to indicate the basis is rather grim warfare….Of the
romantic pairings, the most impression is made by Aldo Ray and Nancy Olson, not
only because it occupies the main portion of the film’s second half….but also
because of the grasp the two stars have on their characters.”
Regardless of critical opinion, Battle Cry was a smash hit for Warner
Bros. and, for its era, an upbeat, patriotic recruitment vehicle for the
Marines.
Producer: Jack L. Warner (uncredited)
Director: Raoul Walsh
Screenplay: Leon M. Uris (screenplay and novel)
Cinematography: Sid Hickox
Art Direction: John Beckman
Music: Max Steiner
Film Editing: William Ziegler
Cast: Van Heflin (Major Sam Huxley), Aldo Ray (Pvt./Pfc Andy Hookens), Mona
Freeman (Kathy, later: Mrs. Danny Forrester), Nancy Olson (Mrs. Pat Rogers),
James Whitmore (MSgt. Mac/Narrator), Raymond Massey (Maj. Gen. Snipes), Tab
Hunter (Pvt. Cpl. Dan ‘Danny’ Forrester), Dorothy Malone (Mrs. Elaine
Yarborough), Anne Francis (Rae), William Campbell (Pvt. ‘Ski’ Wronski).
C-149m.
by Jeff Stafford
SOURCES:
Tab Hunter Confidential by Tab Hunter with Eddie Muller
Videohound’s War Movies by Mike Mayo
The Hollywood Reporter Book of Box Office Hits by Susan Sackett
www.afi.com
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