Planqué malgré lui

When Willie Comes Marching Home (1950)

** (out of 4)

John Ford's comedy about a man (Dan Dailey) who joins the Army to become a war hero but he ends up in the recruiting section back in his hometown, which gets the people there thinking he's a coward. I'm not sure what it is but these Ford comedies just aren't working for me. The whole idea is that the character is a very brave man but due to his placing, people thinks he's a coward. This one joke runs throughout the entire film and it just never made me laugh. I never got bored with the film but without any laughs there's really not much else going on. Dailey is very good in his role and keeps the film moving along. Colleen Townsend and William Demarest are also good as his parents. The film is a comedy but as expected Ford treats the war stuff very serious including during the opening when we hear about the attack of Pearl Harbor. This film shares a lot with Preston Sturges's Hail! The Conquering Hero but that film works a lot better. Vera Miles has her film debut here but I didn't spot her.

It was very hard to make a good comedy about such a tragic event as WW 2, but this film succeeds at it, somehow. With a wonderful performance by leading man, Dan Dailey, and great supporting roles by a bevy of fine B actors, the film is even superior to Hail the Conquering Hero. I will not go into the convoluted, but hilarious, plot of the film, but suffice it to say, the movie does not take off for the first twenty minutes or so. Be patient; it will go from zero to sixty in the final fifty minutes. Be sure to catch this underrated gem of a soldier who has trouble getting into action, and even more trouble getting out of it.

This unheralded opus from one of our greatest directors seems both oddly timed, (5 years after the end of combat in WWII), and unfortunately truncated. The thankfully preserved out-takes presented as deleted scenes on the DVD reveal that this may have been intended as Ford's only full fledged musical....which would have stood in strong contrast to his magnum opuses of this period (the beloved cavalry trilogy)...

As it stands the finished edit is shockingly good on all accounts...full of the director's astonishing eye for human detail and subtle performance. It plays like a slightly warmer hearted Preston Sturges wartime wacky fest (with William Demarest cementing the connection by almost reprising his great role in "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek".

The few numbers that remain are a tantalizing glimpse of how delightful a longer cut would have been...and the (incomplete) outtakes are both delicious and heartbreaking...

One has to wonder who decided to edit the film down...and how much more successful (and remembered) it might have been as Ford's big wartime set musical...

I saw this movie for the first time at 2:30 AM on TCM and loved it. It was a little hard to follow, not seeming like a comedy or drama, but it showed it's true color quickly, and was great. Dan Daley was fabulous as the somewhat goofy GI perpetually stuck assigned to his hometown, yet wanting to go overseas, and Corinne Calvet WOW! What a babe! And the actress who played his girlfriend-also WOW! The whole cast was great, and the plot funny and workable, once you give it a chance. I can't wait to get this one on DVD, so I can see Vera Miles, another super-babe, in her first, if brief movie role. See this one if and when you can, it's worth the time!!!

Although John Ford put in some touches that would make When Willie Comes Marching Home an identifiable Ford film, the film while good will never be considered in his top ten. It's more like the kind of service comedy Bob Hope would have done over at Paramount.

Dan Dailey is in the lead here and this would be the first of three films he did for John Ford, the other two being What Price Glory and The Wings Of Eagles. It's also the only one where we saw any of Dan Dailey's singing and dancing talents on display in a number.

Dailey who hails from Punxatawney, West Virginia is having as typical a Sunday as one would have been having in America on December 7, 1941. He's rehearsing with the band he plays trombone in when news of Pearl Harbor comes over the radio. His father William Demarest is head of the Punxatawney American Legion Post and as luck would have it Dailey is the first man drafted in the town.

But he turns out to be so skilled a marksman that he's needed as an instructor. And wouldn't you know it he's stationed at a new base near the old home town where everyone sees everyone else being shipped off to war. It plays havoc with your ego, even his girlfriend Colleen Townsend has her doubts especially since her brother was shipped off to the Pacific.

But within a week fortune both frowns and smiles on Dailey. He gets assigned as a belly gunner in a B-17 crew, gets shot down over France, meets beautiful resistance leader Corinne Calvet and performs a deed that might just change the course of the war. How that all works out you'll have to see When Willie Comes Marching Home.

I wasn't expecting to see Dailey sing and dance, but that's always a treat. He handles the comedy well, but Ford does not do comedy pictures. He's got a lot of rough house comedy in some of his best work, but they're not the center of the plot. This film would have also been better had a director like George Marshall or Frank Tashlin been at the helm. And while Dailey is good, Bob Hope would have made this a classic.