The Tanks Are Coming

When World War II started in September, 1939, the United States stayed out of the fray. The vast majority of Americans wanted the country to stay neutral....and despite the seriousness of the war, the US government did little to prepare for war. Jump ahead two years and some things have changed for the US. The war seemed imminent and the American public, for the first time, was behind our getting involved. The problem was that the American armed forces were woefully inadequate....a tiny fraction of how big and well equipped the military needed to be. So, Hollywood and the government worked together--and began making films that glamorized life in the armed services. Among these film were mostly comedies, such as "Buck Privates", "Caught in the Draft" and "Tanks a Million"...all from 1941. Here with "The Tanks Are Coming" they made a comedy/documentary hybrid...also from 1941.

The film features the US Army's tank corps and follows men through classes at Fort Knox, Kentucky. And, the film stars George Tobias as a recruit from Brooklyn who is comic relief. Most of what you see is modern color footage of the best tanks America had, the awful and outclassed M3 light tank. While it's all very patriotic and makes it sound like America is ready for war, the opposite was actually true and the tanks mostly junk compared to the German tanks of the same era.

Overall, it's educational and probably did its best to help the war effort. Mildly enjoyable.

By the way, the poster IMDB shows for this film is wrong...it is from the 1951 film of the same name but the movies are both very different and have nothing to do with each other other than the names.

THE TANKS ARE COMING is a Warner Brothers (WB) short dedicated to military preparedness which in 1941 with the first peace time draft in effect and WWII raging was a major motivator. WB put a lot more into this short then usual. First it was filmed in the expensive Three (3) Strip TechniColor process. Second featured the WB stock company and third had the full cooperation of the U.S. Army and its Armor Training School at Fort Knox Kentucky.

Story in brief is that of recruits being indoctrinated in the then new theories of armored mobile warfare. Learning how to maintain and use their new equipment in a effective manner. Watching it no doubt gave theater goers the feeling that we were in good hands and prepared for the conflict ahead. Unfortunately our future enemies watching this no doubt felt we would be better off sticking to making refrigerators then playing with the big boys.

That is the best lesson in watching this now is how UNPREPARED we (U.S.A.) were at this new warfare and for WWII in general. The equipment that had to be depended upon just was not very good and would certainly not deter our future enemies Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. Nor bring confidence to our future allies. We were fortunate to see this on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Its one (1) of those things that you have to be lucky to catch, but if it was not for TCM would never be seen at all.

Tanks Are Coming, The (1941)

** (out of 4)

Oscar-nominated short has George Tobias playing a new recruit who gives up his taxi cab so that he can join the Army where he soon finds himself driving a tank. This short left me somewhat disappointed but there are still a couple things that make it worth viewing. The first is that it was filmed in three-strip Technicolor and I must say that this is one of the best looking examples of this color. The colors really jump off the screen and it certainly belongs right up there with The Adventures of Robin Hood in terms of its beautiful color. The second reason to watch is because it was actually filmed at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Having grown up fifteen-miles from there, I got an added kick out of how it looked back in the day. With that said, the story itself is a rather weak one and I really didn't get too many kicks out of the comedy style Tobias brought to the film. There were countless pre-WW2 shorts back in the day but this here isn't one of the best.

George Tobias is quite amusing here as the New York taxi driver "Malowski" who heeds President Roosevelt's stirring call to arms in 1941 and - much to the disbelief of his gal - joins up. He decides to drive his cab all the way to Fort Knox in Kentucky where he enlists and is trained on the rudiments of learning how to drive a tank. I'm not sure this is really about tanks at all, it's more of an educational training film that extols the virtues of the US Army, it's training and equipment - all with a view to tugging at some patriotic heart-strings and increasing recruitment. Some of the commentary is just a little on the over-zealous side and I'm not sure anyone would describe the military infrastructure as a "democracy" - regardless of your caste or creed! Tobias and his yellow "Betsy" try to inject a little humour and humanity into this quite brutal tree-bashing film before a rather rousing denouement that only needed a poster from Lord Kitchener. These films all had their purpose and the war may have turned out quite differently had they not achieved their goals - but the almost fervent tones of narrator Knox Manning did grate after a while. PS: Didn't Benjamin Franklin take an awful long time to write his name?!

George Tobias can't take his sweetie to the steamfitters' ball, because he's taking his cab to join the armored cavalry. As Knox Manning drones on pompously, George is going to become a tank driver, learn Morse code and fire a gun accurately. You never know when you're going to run into that cop from 6th Avenue and 53rd Street!

During the Second World, Warner Brothers turned out shorts glorifying several branches and divisions of the armed forces. This one, as you might guess, is abut the tank corps, and played for laughs. It's a bit corny for Warners' resident foreign accent specialist.