A Glittering Cast: Battle Cry

1955 War Romance
From Warner Bros.
Directed by Raoul Walsh

Starring
Van Heflin
Aldo Ray
Tab Hunter
Nancy Olson
James Whitmore
Dorothy Malone
Mona Freeman
John Lupton
Anne Francis
Perry Lopez
William Campbell
Carleton Young
Fess Parker
Allyn Ann McLerie
Raymond Massey

The top three actors were the main appeal for me but this was a big cast of familiar faces and big casts generally got me out to the movies. War movies, as I've said before, are not at the top of my list of chosen genres despite the usual supply of testosterone.  Van Heflin was already whose movies I enjoyed (especially Shane) and Tab Hunter and Aldo Ray were hot, blond movie gods at the time.  There were four major female roles as well and Dorothy Malone and Nancy Olson were two actresses I much enjoyed.

After watching it again yesterday, I came away realizing how little is devoted to battle.  I, for one, am glad but then the title throws me and I found myself wondering how former soldiers and especially Marines viewed this one considering it's far more about romance than war.  So I checked out such reviews and was surprised how many rated this film quite high.

The screenplay was written by the author of the novel on which it is based, former Marine Leon Uris.  While he went on to write Exodus, These Angry Hills and Topaz among others, Battle Cry was his first novel and perhaps his most personal.

The novel and the film detail the life Uris lived in the military starting with his enlistment, boot camp at San Diego, encampment in New Zealand, fighting on Guadalcanal and Tarawa and the big battle at Saipan.  In real life, Uris actually missed the fighting of his 2nd battalion, 6th Marines at Saipan because he was in the hospital suffering from malaria.

The military sequences are chiefly during boot camp and numerous maneuvers and the hijinks while on liberty.  The Saipan battle sequences, well done as they are, come at the end of the film and are virtually all that is offered.

Heflin stars as Maj (later Col) Sam Huxley and his well-trained men are known as Huxley's Harlots.  While waiting impatiently to become engaged in some battle, any battle, he trains them relentlessly, turning them into fighting machines.  The movie feels like an insightful look into Marine life and those reviews I read seem to confirm that.

James Whitmore plays Huxley's right-hand man and is involved somehow in every soldier's life.  It's a great role for the actor... tough as a Marine is trained to be but with a big heart.

Whitmore and Heflin discuss strategy

The recruits are played by John Lupton, as a bookworm, Perry Lopez as a punk, L. Q. Jones as the jokester, Fess Parker, who sings and plays guitar, and William Campbell as a man who receives a Dear John letter and falls apart, among others.  But the story focuses mainly on the lives of Aldo Ray and Tab Hunter.  They all play radio operators which is what Uris did as a Marine.

Hunter gets to romance two women.  He has left girlfriend Mona Freeman back home while he gets involved with married Dorothy Malone in New Zealand who manages the local USO.  His love scenes with Freeman are rather chaste and dull but his naughty relationship with Malone is hot, 1955-style.  

Hunter and Malone

The best romance-- indeed, the best part of the film for me-- is the one involving Ray and Olson.  He plays a former lumberjack, someone who hasn't spent much time indoors except for spending quiet time with his legion of female admirers.  He's not quite housebroken but that froggy voice wrapped in his soft moaning and his big, manly exterior encourage women to give him a try.

Olson is a Kiwi recent war widow and she resists giving him a try although it wouldn't be the film's best romance had she not changed her mind.  Both actors give their all to their tender and emotional story.  She is at first determined not to become involved with another soldier but gives in with all the passion she has in her.  He realizes this is a wholly different type of woman than he's been used to and while he attempts to treat her as he did all the others, he is blown away when he realizes she's the best thing he's ever come across.

Ray and Olson

She becomes pregnant and they marry.  And then he goes off to Saipan and she fears she will never see him again.  He promises her he will return.  Unfortunately he loses a leg and it makes him want to turn his back on her and all he cares about.  It is a scene with Whitmore addressing Ray's despair that brings a lump to one's throat and Ray's return to his wife and the son he's never seen adds another one. 

Two more affecting scenes involve Olson and Heflin.  The first is when he meets her at a party and they have a chat about life in the military particularly for a woman waiting for her soldier-husband to come home.  He doesn't realize she's a war widow.  Very touching.  The second is after Heflin hears that Ray is planning to go AWOL and Heflin pleads with Olson, who is considering going along with it, to understand the consequences for the family.

The first half of the two-hour and 29-minute film is a familiar Walsh plot device... a series of vignettes featuring a slew of characters.  (I was glued to the boot camp scenes.)  He was known for his adventure films (war, westerns, etc) and his guidance of male actors.  Walsh was never one to say much to his actors and some were often rattled that he failed to mention how they were doing.  He said they already knew what to do or he wouldn't have hired them.

And that acting is uniformly perfect and Heflin, Ray, Olson and Whitmore have the most screen time.  Most of the publicity at the time surrounded new Warner Bros player, Hunter, and I sense that it is also his name most associated with the movie over the years. 

James Dean and Paul Newman, both working on the WB lot at the time, were being considered for the role that Hunter got.  At the time he wanted it more than anything he had previously done because of the glittering cast, the director and because it was based on a popular novel which would guarantee a hefty box office.  Hunter very much respected Heflin and they would make two more films together, both westerns... Gunman's Walk (1958) and They Came to Cordura (1959). 

Malone, Hunter, Freeman & Walsh hear Uris 

Justus McQueen, in his film debut, amusingly played the character of L. Q. Jones and he liked that name so much that he took it for his professional name thereafter.

William Campbell and starlet Susan Morrow played a romantic couple but in real life they were brother and sister-in-law.  Campbell was at the time married to Morrow's sister, Judith Exner who would become famous as the mistress (at the same time) of JFK and gangster Sam Giancana. 

Battle Cry became one of the most commercially popular war films made up to that time despite the fact that the censors kept it from being as juicy as the novel.  It seemed to me to be a valentine to the Marines.  Battle sequences were filmed in Puerto Rico while the rest of the movie was shot in California.

Here's the trailer:

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Actresses