predone

*McKeever and the Colonel* almost certainly got greenlighted in 1961 as the result of a favorable reception for the television broadcast of Charlton Heston's *The Private War of Major Benson* (1955).

The antics of McKeever, his allies and his enemies among the military school student body, made for harmless entertainment even by the standards of the early '60s. I came to think of it as a boys' version of *The Phil Silvers Show* (1955-1959), made memorable by the rapscallion character of MSgt. Earnie Bilco, then pounding away in re-runs on NBC.

Those who are only familiar with the absolutely godawful 1995 Damon Wayans knock-off of Heston's movie (*Major Payne*) owe themselves a look at the much, much better original, and would certainly enjoy seeing *McKeever* if someone had the sense to issue the series in re-runs or on DVD. --

While I also remember having seen this film broadcast on television in the '60s, I recall it having been theatrically re-released - on a small scale, as Saturday matinée fare - in the early '70s.

I was in college back then, and looking through the paper I noticed an advertisement for a film titled *Journey to the Beginning of Time* showing in several of the suburban theaters around Philadelphia. Curious as to whether it was the same film I'd caught on TV about a decade before, I gave up a Saturday morning's worth of sleep - precious to a college student! - and SEPTA'd to the nearest movie house named in the advertisement.

My suspicions proved correct. Rather badly dubbed and obviously edited in a fairly clunky fashion, with cruddy sound and picture, it was nevertheless the same interesting flick with a novel science fantasy premise and good pacing. Surprisingly, it had pretty good "sense of hazard" elements (including the river petering out in a carboniferous-era swamp too shallow to float the Central Park rental boat through) to keep the audience's attention.

Given my grandkids' present fixation upon all things dinosaurian (they've worn out every *Land Before Time* VHS tape we'd bought for them, and my youngest grandson - five years old - is presently pestering us to buy them anew in DVD), I've got two questions about this old Czech film.

(1) Why the heck hasn't a somewhat cleaned-up version been released for home viewing? There's obviously a market for it, antique stop-motion animation notwithstanding.

(2) Why has there been no apparent interest in the entertainment industry regarding a modern-day remake of the film? Given current advances in CGI - and the lower costs of more mature special effects technologies - it could be done for a much lower budget than something like *Jurassic Park* (1993; approximately $62,000,000).

Considering the staying power of the *Land Before Time* franchise (one released theatrically and nine more direct-to-video, if memory serves), both the original Czech movie and a well-devised remake could find sales as "safe" viewing fodder for pre-teens like my grandkids.

The video sales would be just as much an evergreen, too, as I've found to my continuing sorrow as I've had to buy a copy of each *Land Before Time* movie for each of my kids' families as the grandchildren grow into an interest in Littlefoot & Co.

I have always considered *Battleground* to be one of the best examples of what can be done by a good, conscientious production team with a minimum of money and the scrupulous application of intelligence, truthfulness, and ingenuity.

Take special note of the fact that the actions in which the glider infantry companies depicted in *Battleground* participated (while typical of the hard fighting and harder conditions these troops endured) could not be disputed by any of the veterans who were present at that battle because those companies *DID NOT EXIST*.

Writer/producer Robert Pirosh obviously knew that the glider infantry regiments of U.S. Airborne divisions were originally constituted with only two battalions each ("A" through "D" companies in the first battalion, "E" through "H" companies in the second).

In order to prevent this 1949 movie from drawing the jeers of veterans who could justifiably say "That was my outfit, and it wasn't like that at all!" Pirosh designated the companies considered in this movie as if their regiment had an organic *third* battalion (companies "I" through "M").

By this stage in the war, it had been found that glider infantry regiments were too "thin" with only two battalions, and the decision was made to increase each glider infantry regiment's establishment to three battalions. This was not done by raising a third battalion intrinsic to the regiment, but by "cannibalizing" one regiment to attach one of its battalions to each of two other glider infantry regiments. Thus the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment came to contain its two organic 1st and 2nd Battalions and the "temporarily attached" 1st Battalion of the 401st GIR.

No companies "I," "K," "L," or "M" ever existed in the glider infantry contingent of the 101st Airborne Division during the Ardennes Offensive.

Where every minute of the ghodawful recent movie *Pearl Harbor* is laden with historical idiocies discernible by any twelve-year-old boy who'd read THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO (Lawson, 1943), *Battleground* offers the viewer an exercise in the cinematic presentation of factual reality cleverly overlaid with those elements of fiction required to attain dramatic coherence. In one sequence, for example, there can even be seen a shoulder-stocked bipod-mounted Browning M1919-A4 "light" machine gun, which was designed for (and issued almost exclusively to) the airborne divisions in World War II. This is the sort of understated but painstaking attention to detail that Pirosh could have expected would only be appreciated by the very small number of former paratroopers and glider infantrymen in his 1949 audiences, but he paid them that tribute without stinting.

A very good script, excellent production values, fine acting, and a genuine respect for the men who held the Bastogne perimeter against everything the enemy could send.