Veteran’s Day is November 11. While we all try to escape from the most exasperating Presidential Campaign in our history let me pay tribute to the Men and Women who have served in the military to insure we keep our electoral process and our freedoms.
Having served in the Navy four years (there he goes again!) I have a keen interest in any movie about the military, especially the sea service. I did serve during peace time so had no experience with combat but still spent most of my tour of duty at sea on an aircraft carrier, the USS AMERCA CV66. Among other jobs I ran the ship’s television station for almost two years. Movies have always been important to me and so providing a few hours of entertainment every day when we were at sea was just about the best job I could have had.
The author in his Navy days
So in no particular order here are ten of my top favorite US Navy movies and some honorable mentions.
- The Sand Pebbles 1966 Directed by Robert Wise
A true epic in every sense of the word The Sand Pebbles stars Steve McQueen when his career was really starting to take off. The San Pablo (called the Sand Pebbles by her crew) is a Yangtze River gunboat, a branch of the US Navy that is long gone. Protecting American interests in China ( as Will Rogers said, how would we feel if the Chinese Navy sent gun boats up the Mississippi to look after Chinese laundries in Memphis and St. Louis?) the Sand Pebbles begins in Hong Kong in 1926. Steve McQueen is Holman, an Engineman First Class, a part that McQueen was born to play. McQueen loved machines, especially engines and he looks at home and comfortable in Navy dress whites. The Sand Pebbles covers a lot of ground, politics, social upheaval, the everyday routine of Navy personnel. Candice Bergen falls for Holman, even though she is the daughter of a Missionary and Holman tells her not to get involved with “a China Sailor.” In the opening scene Holman reports for his new duty station at Fleet Landing Hong Kong. Shore patrol tells him there is no liberty. The next thing he does is go into a bar and get himself a drink and a woman. That my friends is a true fleet sailor in anybody’s Navy!
- Sink the Bismarck! 1960 Directed by Lewis Gilbert
For the United States the shock of being pulled into a World War started at Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941. For the English it began for real with the sinking of the HMS Hood by the Bismarck. England was already at war with Germany, as was most of Europe. The English had thought the Battleship Hood was unsinkable. The Germans thought the Bismarck was too. The Bismarck story is to the military what the Titanic was to ocean liner travel. The Bismarck was on its maiden voyage, in fact was still going through its sea trials. The Germans knew it was invincible. After the Hood was sunk word came from Winston Churchill himself “we must Sink the Bismarck!” and that the English Navy did, basically by surrounding it with every ship they had and blasting the son of a bitch until it sank Having lived on board a Navy vessel four years I find Sink the Bismarck one of the best Navy movies. Most movies about the Navy only show the ship from the bridge and the gun decks, or flight decks if it’s a carrier based movie. In Sink the Bismarck we see berthing areas, mess decks, even heads on the German and British ships. The sea battles are done with miniatures but they are very well handled. And it even inspired a hit song by Johnny Horton, which if you ever listen to it you will not get it out of your head for days!
- Billy Budd 1962 Directed by Peter Ustinov
There are many great films about the Navy in the days of sailing ships: Master and Commander, Far Side of the World to name one, Damn the Defiant for another. Billy Budd is a true masterpiece, impeccably directed by Peter Ustinov, who also plays the ship‘s Captain and beautifully filmed in black and white Cinemascope (a combination rarely seen these days) Billy Budd is based on a short novel by Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick. Billy leaves a merchant ship in mid ocean to take on duties on a Royal Navy vessel, even though his ship mates warn him against such a move. He is liked by everyone on board, except the ships Quartermaster, Claggart played as one cold hearted son of a bitch by Robert Ryan. Billy tries to make friends with the man, naively thinking that everyone is a basically a good person. He accidently kills the man in a fight. The Captain and his officers feel compelled to follow Naval law to the letter, put Billy and trial and against the wishes of the entire crew hang the poor lad. Melville knew how to tell a story and Billy Budd was given first class treatment by Ustinov and his entire crew. It’s a shame he did not get a chance to direct more often. And the credits are curious indeed, every single actor who has a speaking part speaks his character name during the credits, when each actor’s name appears on screen. I have never seen this done in any other movie.
- On the Town 1949 Directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly
Three fleet Sailors (Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munchin) have one days liberty in New York, and somehow everything goes both wrong and right. They manage to do every single thing a sailor might like to do on liberty in a city like New York. One of a series of MGM musicals made by the legendary Arthur Freed unit On the Town first is a delight due to being filmed almost entirely on location in New York City. It is a beautiful snapshot, in Technicolor, of a New York that is long gone. Based on a hit Broadway show the music and dances are terrific. And the ladies the sailors hook up with are dazzling, Ann Miller and Vera Ellen more than keep up with the men in dancing, Betty Garrett is woman taxi driver who has to seduce Sinatra into her arms as he is more interested in going to museums (an in joke if ever there was!) And the ladies are one reason On The Town is one of my favorite musicals and Navy movies. Here is a movie from Hollywood’s Golden age singing the praises of one night stands. There is not one trace of romance anywhere in the movie. The ladies know they are not going to see these guys again and they are ok with that. None of the sailor’s promises to write or to ever see these women again, and everybody, including the NYPD is happy at the end credits. Oh for the good old days!
6.Enemy Below 1957 Directed by Dick Powell
Submarines are a special kind of vessel, demanding a special kind of crew. I doubt that I could have served on a sub, and I doubt I could have made the cut for submarine duty. The crew lives in such close quarters you have to learn to get along or you’ll be at each other’s throats. Living on board an aircraft carrier, a much bigger vessel with many more places to hide, drove me crazy. To this day I do not like to be crowded, small spaces do not bother me, but if people are literally breathing down my neck I get very antsy. Which leads me to Enemy Below the story of a German U Boat and a US Navy destroyer escort in a deadly game of cat and mouse in the South Atlantic. On the German boat the skipper is Curd Jurgens, playing the kind of part he owned in the 1950s and 1960s, the loyal German officer who never did like the Nazis, is sick and tired of the war and just wants to go home, hopefully still alive. His executive officer is Theodore Bikel, who may be the only actor to play submarine officers in the German and Russian Navies (he was the skipper of the submarine in The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming!) On the American side the Captain is none other than Robert Mitchum, he has help from both Al (David) Hedison and Frank Albertson. There is not that much action until the very end but the tension level is worthy of Alfred Hitchcock. Dick Powell was a top notch director and one hell of an actor. One of the best submarine movies ever made.
- 30 Seconds Over Tokyo 1944 Directed by Mervyn Leroy
In the days after Pearl Harbor America was in deep shock and extreme paranoia, not knowing when or where the Japanese might attack again. Our brand new enemies were gaining ground all over the Pacific rim. The Japanese were convinced we could never touch their home islands, much less actually win the war. President Roosevelt insisted the military come up with some way we could hit the Japanese, and he didn’t care how it would be done. The Army Air Force and the Navy came up with what was then, and now, an insane idea. Fly heavily armed bombers, big ones, off the deck of aircraft carriers. My brother Philip is even more of a military historian than I am and told me once this was his favorite WWII movie. As he put it, the pilots who flew those bombers “had balls made out of titanium steel!” Not only were bombers never designed to fly off a carrier, carriers were not designed for that big of an aircraft. Plus the planes carried a heavy payload, plus it was done in rough seas and heavy rain. The actual Doolittle raid did not do that much damage, some of the pilots were captured and tortured by the Japanese, others made it to China and were rescued by the Chinese Nationalist or Communist troops. But the damage to Japanese morale was incalculable.
- The Last Detail 1973 Directed by Hal Ashby
One of the movies that put Jack Nicholson on the map as a major acting talent The Last Detail is probably my favorite of any movie dealing with the US Navy. Nicholson and Otis Young are career men, first Class Petty Officers waiting for their orders in the Norfolk, Virginia Naval base transient barracks (where I spent a few days when I was mustered out of active duty in September 1979.) They are assigned what the service calls “chaser duty” they are tasked with escorting a loser of a sailor (Randy Quaid) to the Portsmouth, New Hampshire Naval Prison. The movie was filmed in sequence beginning with the Norfolk Base (and a brief glimpse of what was called “The Strip” right outside Gate One, a string of bars, massage parlors and other dens of iniquity, the strip was bought up by the Navy and torn down right before I arrived at my duty station). Traveling by bus and train up the Eastern Seaboard Buddusky (Nicholson) decides to “show the kid a good time” which includes getting him drunk, getting him laid with a hooker (Carol Kane) and getting into a fist fight with Marines in the NYC Port Authority bus terminal bathroom. There is much in The Last Detail that any former fleet sailor will recognize. Clifton James as the Master Chief Master at Arms asking Quaid “do you know why these Petty Officers have been tasked with escorting you to the Portsmouth New Hampshire Naval Prison? Because they’re mean bastards when they want to be and they always want to be and they are not about to take any shit from a pussy like you!” But the crowning moment, the most pure Jack Nicholson moment in his resume, in a bar in Washington DC Buddusky is told by the bartender he will not serve Quaid as he is underage, “the law says I have to serve him” meaning Otis Young who is black. Highly offended Buddusky gets real hot, real quick. The bar tender threatens to call Shore Patrol (Buddusky having put away his Shore Patrol arm band and .45 automatic.) Out comes the .45, slammed down on the bar with the exclamation “God Damn It, I AM the mother fucking shore patrol mother fucker! I am the mother fucking shore patrol!” This may have been the first time a white actor actually said “mother fucker” in a Hollywood movie. Based on a novel by Darryl Ponicson, which is much different than the movie, The Last Detail is incredibly accurate as to what the Navy was like in the 1970s, I know, I was there.
- Torpedo Bay 1963 Directed by Charles Frend and Bruno Vailati
A variation on Enemy Below and an Italian English co production Torpedo Bay tells a “based on a true story” of an English minesweeper and an Italian Submarine engaging in the area of Gibraltar. Both ships pull into a the neutral port of Tangiers where the Italian and English find they have a lot in common, including bar room brawling, in which the Italians actually side with their English counterparts against the locals . All thrown into the same cells the English and Italians continuing their bonding and find it hard to get back to the war once both ships are back at sea. Pretty much a programmer Torpedo Bay is worth seeing for James Mason’s portrayal of the English Captain. This is yet another Naval officer whose heart really isn’t in killing the opposition, and really who wants to do that? If you get to know your enemy you might not want to kill him.
- Follow the Fleet 1936 Directed by Mark Sandrich
I have to say that probably my favorite series of franchise movies, outside the Universal and Hammer series of monster movies, would have to be the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers series of musicals from RKO in the 1930s. Elegant, glitzy, unreal, fantastic in sets and costumes these films bear no relation to the real world what so ever. Top Hat for instance gives us a Venice that looks more like an indoor amusement park. Flyin’ Down to Rio presents a song and dance from the wings of airplanes. Astaire was always in top hat and tails, Rogers in the most outrageous ball gowns (as was pointed out by someone wiser than me, she did everything he did only backwards and in high heels!) Follow the Fleet was one of their movies that actually tried to ground them in a real world story. Astaire is a fleet sailor, his ship is home ported in San Francisco, his Petty Officer is none other than Randolph Scott. He used to be a dancer, with Sherry Martin (Ginger Rogers) and their reunion is heart breaking. Rogers falls apart completely at seeing someone she really cared for and never thought she would see again. Of course they dance, of course there are misunderstandings, between them and Randolph Scott and Harriett Nelson (yes, THAT Harriett Nelson, Mrs. Ozzie Nelson!) and of course it all works out in the end. But Follow the Fleet also presents us with a song and dance number built around…..suicide. Face the Music and Dance, one of the best songs they ever danced to, is all about two people who are on the verge of giving it all up, throwing in the towel, killing themselves. Who but Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers could have gotten away with that? Did any of the suits and ties at RKO object to that number? Also precious is a dance number on the ship while out at sea. Astaire is giving dance lessons to his ship mates (on a battle ship no less) dozens of sailors ball room dancing with each other, then the Marines show up! And look fast for Betty Grable and Lucille Ball.
- Das Boot 1981 Directed by Wolfgang Peterson
For sheer unrelenting realism, especially about life on board a submarine Das Boot is the last word. Made for German television and edited for a theatrical release Das boot is a grueling, riveting experience. Peterson put his actors through hell, the main set was on gimbals and could rock back and forth, up and down, the actors were drenched in sea water and breathed diesel fumes every day. Das Boot is another submarine movie that deals with the problem of getting past Gibraltar, a British port , when you are at war with Britain. At one point we assume the sub is doomed, they are at the bottom and engines are dead. Somehow they get moving again, but this being a German movie we know these guys are doomed. Das Boot makes no comments about politics or morality. I understand that German U boat crews had very few Nazi true believers on board, they were loyal Germans who simply did as they were ordered and tried to survive, what any soldier or fleet sailor or airman tries to do, in anybody’s military. Das Boot is a masterpiece, but this is not light entertainment, it is the Navy’s version of Saving Private Ryan, grim stuff.
I have high hopes for the upcoming release of the USS INDIANAPOLIS Men of Courage, although I question the wisdom of casting Nicholas Cage as the Commanding Officer, maybe it will be ok.
I have to do some honorable mentions:
The Fighting Lady 1944 is a great documentary about life aboard a WWII aircraft carrier, and in color!
Men of the Fighting Lady 1955 concerns carrier combat during the Korean War.
Run Silent, Run Deep 1958 another first class submarine movie with the highest level of testosterone in movie history, Clark Gable arguing with Burt Lancaster for 90 minutes? Let me find some place to hide!
Midway 1976 A historians movie more than entertainment, Midway gives a step by step accounting of how the Pacific war turned around in just 15 minutes. Originally presented in Sensurround Midway makes use of lots of archival footage.
Tora, Tora, Tora! 1970 Another film from a former enemies viewpoint Tora is about the best movie that will ever be made about the attack on Pearl Harbor (there, I just mentioned the other one!) We get to see the inside of Japanese air craft carriers down to the most minute detail, I especially love how the flight deck crews were uniformed. And we get to hear Admiral Yamamoto’s famous statement about “awakening a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve!”
Destination Tokyo 1943 Another submarine movie and more tense dramatics at crush depth.
They Were Expendable 1945 John ford weighed the cost war with a movie about the PT Boats and the incredible cost in lives it took to use them. They Were Expendable had the balls to present one character after another, that we come to like and appreciate, and then have them killed until almost none of the original cast remains. Few war movies have that kind of courage.
PT 109 1963 The (mostly) true story of John Kennedy’s war time service as skipper of a PT boat.
South Pacific 1958 A super wide screen Technicolor musical involving the Navy in the South Pacific (naturally) filled with great songs, but for Navy men “We Ain’t got Dames” has to be the highlight!
The Caine Mutiny 1954 I had shipmates on board the America reciting dialog from this movie, without them even seeing it! “Who took those strawberries?” and “I proved with geometric logic that someone took those strawberries!”
Men of Honor 2000 The true story of Carl Brashear the first black Master Diver in the US Navy and the obstacles he had to overcome, including losing a leg, to make Master Chief as well. Brashear was still on active duty when I was on board the AMERICA.
And I suppose I should mention Top Gun 1986, there I just did!
Onionhead 1958 Leave it to a movie about the Coast Guard to have some of the best details about life onboard a ship. Made as a follow up to the hit movie No Time for Sergeants this is one of Andy Griffith’s best, as well as Walter Matthau “Onionhead, you gotta make cinnamon rolls!”
And speaking of the Coast Guard Finest Hours 2016 is probably the best movie ever made about the incredible risks they take. We used to make fun of the Coast Guard in Norfolk, Uncle Sam’s Floating Boy Scouts or Uncle Sugar’s Canoe Club but the reality is, “when the Navy comes in the Coast Guard goes out!” Search and rescue in foul weather and drug interdiction on the high seas are not child’s play.
And finally, a dream project. I recently had a long talk with a woman veteran, 25 years in the Air Force and retired as a Major. Among many other things we discussed, I told her about the talk when I was on active duty as to when and if women should be put on Navy ships, especially combat ships. Most people higher on the food chain said it would be a distraction, in many ways. My feeling at the time, as I told this particular veteran, give women their own ship. Staff a Destroyer, a Submarine or maybe even a carrier with all females and stand back and let them do the job. This lady gasped in surprise and asked me if I had written a screenplay with that idea and submitted it to Hollywood? No, but that is an idea.
So, in a what if situation, my idea of a dream cast for such a film? Start with Helen Mirren as the Secretary of Defense, Demi Moore as an Admiral, Cate Blanchett as the Captain, Scarlett Johansson as the Executive Officer, Gal Gadot as a Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant, Helen Hunt as a Master Chief, Tilda Swinton as a LTJG, Emily Blunt as a LTCD, Reese Witherspoon as another Master Chief (Boatswain’s Mate, with an anchor tattooed on her forearm, and smoking cigars!) Quite frankly done properly such a film could have speaking parts for every working actress in Hollywood and give a break to a lot of young actresses to play the crew. I know I’d pay money to see Jennifer Lawrence, Rihanna, Kate Beckinsale and Mia Wasikowska fly F14s on and off a flight deck! Or Sofia Vergara work on a helicopter engine.
And with that I’ll ship out for parts and ports unknown. I will be at the VA Cemetery on the 11th, paying my respects. If you meet any veterans, please thank them, and maybe watch a movie or two.
