O.H.M.S.

You'll either love it or hate it. John Mills probably hated it, playing a decidedly secondary role as British straight man to Wallace Ford's eccentrically comic Yankee soldier who has somehow found his way into the British army. Ford's wise-cracking character steals every scene and the only question is whether he'll also steal John Mills' girl.

From its outset the movie tries to achieve too much - it wants to be a comedy, a romance, a serious drama and a military propaganda piece. It's hard to strike the right balance between so many competing objectives and the inevitable result is that it does not achieve distinction in any ofthem.

Just one of the numerous imbalances in the movie is the inclusion of too many lengthy items of newsreel footage showing ranks of military horsemen and precision marching foot soldiers training in Britain in the late 1930s. These skills seem woefully unsuitable for the imminent mechanized blitzkrieg about to engulf Europe as the movie was being made. It's sad confirmation of the adage that every army is only prepared to fight its previous war.

"You're in the Army Now" is an unusual film. It stars Wallace Ford, a guy you probably thought was an American but who actually was born in the UK and raised in Canada. It also is directed by American director Raoul Walsh. Yet, the film is from Gaumont Productions in Britain! That's a most unusual background, that's for sure!

Jimmy (Wallace Ford) is a small-time hood in New York. One night he's gambling and is jumped by a Chinese gang. When he comes to his senses, there's a dead body next to him and he runs, as with his background the police will assume he's guilty...and they do. So, he runs away to England, using the dead man's passport. This dead guy was on his way to join the army in Britain...so Jimmy just takes his place. Unfortunately, his laziness and independent streak make him a poor match for the discipline of the army. He also is a poor match is his taste in girls, as the girl he's gaga over is the Sergeant Major's daughter (Anna Lee)!! To make it worse, his best friend (John Mills) is also gaga for this blonde beauty.

After a while, Jimmy manages to make a passable soldier. That is...until his old girlfriend from the States arrives and threatens to blow his cover. Naturally, Jimmy being an idiot, he makes a VERY bad choice. What's next? See the film.

I do agree with the review that refers to this film as 'Raoul Walsh's first Cagney picture'. It's easy to imagine Cagney playing Ford's role...very easy. Ford, like Cagney, is cocky and a tough little guy...and he even has a passing similar look.

So is it worth seeing? Yes...it does make an amiable time-passer...even if you have to listen to Ford sing (!).

Jimmy Tracey (Wallace Ford) is a small-time gangster from New York who finds himself mixed up in a murder, becomes a suspect, and goes on the run with the victim's wallet which contains his passport and a ticket for a trip to England by ship. Assuming the identity of the deceased, Jimmy Dean from Winnipeg, Tracey ships to England where he's met at customs by Dean's long lost childhood buddies, Corporal Dawson (John Mills) and his sweetheart Miss Briggs (Anna Lee), daughter of a Sergeant who was close to Dean's father. They all take Tracey to be Dean and he's pushed into enlisting in the army. A rivalry for the girl soon develops between the two fellows, tempered by a growing sense of comradeship; and a variety of diversions arise, including a boxing match and the re-appearance of Tracey's nightclub singer girlfriend from New York (Grace Bradley). Then the boys ship out to China, along with Miss Briggs and her Sergeant daddy, and face rampaging 'bandits' in some substantial battle scenes.

British production company Gaumont Pictures hired Raoul Walsh to direct O.H.M.S ('On Her Majesty's Service', renamed You're in the Army for the US) and together they cooked up a workman-like picture which, though not a bad film, offers little sense of character development or real dramatic progression, but rather comes across as a sequence of slightly disjointed episodes, some of which are entertaining, and others a bit dull. The film begins and ends well, and has a lot going for it, but it loses its way in the middle, veering all over the place, and at only 87 minutes it feels too long. Among the excess matter is a series of drawn out military pageantry and training scenes which feel awkward, especially removed from the context of the film's pre-WWII release date (the film was cut to 71 minutes for US release and I'm guessing much of this material was trimmed then). Ford does OK as a sort of poor man's Cagney - tough, confident, ambitious, lusty, coarse, but a regular guy despite his failings, even getting in a little song and dance routine - but he's nowhere near Cagney for charm, and looks strangely tired and unhappy for much of the film. Mills wears a keen, boyish spirit; Lee plays it independent but a bit naive; Bradley is sassy, streetwise and fun (the more interesting of the two girls but sadly her part is small). But, like I say, all in all it's not really a bad film. I've been harder on it than I could have been in an attempt at objectivity. It'd make a good first half of a double bill with The Fighting 69th released a few years later and starring Cagney and Pat O'Brian, with Cagney playing a more charismatic, but similarly reluctant and undisciplined newly recruited soldier.

American director Raoul Walsh bringing Grace Bradley with him did this Gaumont British film as an American style buddy film. Also coming over was Wallace Ford, but in his case he was returning to the land of his birth.

In Ford's case he's over from the USA fleeing from a murder rap, a crime he didn't do. He's joined the British army and in their basic training buddies it up with young John Mills, then a rising name in the cinema across the pond. The two of them are rivals for Anna Lee. Bradley however comes across to Great Britain as well as part of an entertainment troop and she knows Ford from back in the states.

As the director of What Price Glory, Walsh was the guy who brought us the male buddy film and a lot of that camaraderie is in O.H.M.S. The action sequences in China where the British army saves a British enclave on the frontier is really well done. Ford and Mills have the proper chemistry to pull off a Captain Flagg/Sergeant Quirt of the lower ranks type act.

Nice action film, more of what you would see in the American cinema than the British, but is done well indeed.

Wallace Ford is a small-time crook in New York who has to flee to Great Britain. Once there, through a series of misunderstandings, he finds himself a recruit in the British Army, vying for the affection of Sergeant-Major Frank Cellier's daughter, Anna Lee, with John Mills. Mills was near the start of his long career in which he played many any army man, starting as a raw recruit in the previous year's REGAL CAVALCADE. He would be promoted out of the ranks during the Second World War and reach the rank of Field Marshall in 1969's OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR, amidst nearly three quarters of a century in which he was a bulwark of British film actors.

This service comedy is a fairly standard affair, although a good deal of pleasure is available. Ford sings and dances, as does gorgeous Grace Bradley as a show girl. There's an exciting battle sequence and editor Charles Saunders offers some fine montage work of British soldiers training and on parade. Director Raoul Walsh, on a working vacation from the U.S. knew how to mix comedy and savagery and, within the limits of late-1930s delicacy, he does so ably.