The Autobiography of a 'Jeep'

This surprisingly interesting short documentary works much better than you might expect it to, given its basic description as a military-produced promotional film about the development of the jeep. The production is solid, and the footage provides plenty of variety that holds your interest rather well.

The narrative device of using the vehicle's perspective was no doubt chosen to keep the subject light and upbeat. While sometimes a bit at odds with the tone of the actual footage, it usually works all right.

The footage itself is generally quite good, showing many of the reasons why the humble-looking jeep became such a fixture in the Army. The brief footage of public figures and celebrities riding in jeeps is also interesting. It does solid job of presenting what the jeep is all about, and along the way it also gives you an appreciation for some of the many hardships and risks that the soldiers using it had to endure.

This was a very cute film from the Office Of War Information about the invention and development of the "jeep". One difference today is that the quotations marks have been dropped. Today's audience viewing this will learn that the word came into existence because the order that the automobile industry designers got was for general purpose (GP) type vehicle for rough terrain.

The jeep takes on human voice and persona and we see the vehicle perform in all kinds of conditions doing all kinds of tasks. A few celebrities get into the act, many a touring celebrity rode in those things away at the front. Presidents, prime ministers, generals and movie stars.

The jeep of yesterday has spawned the SUV all terrain vehicles of today. But they're still around, a popular product spawned of wartime necessity.

When he debarked on a Normandy beach a few days after the D-Day landings, Andy Rooney was a correspondent and, as such, was issued a Jeep, an ungainly but rugged four-wheeled convertible. He used the vehicle through the European Theater for most of the rest of the war. At the end, he was transferred to the China-Burma-India Theater where nothing of import was happening. Since he need to leave the jeep behind, he simply turned it over to a fellow correspondent.

Two years after the war's end, Rooney received a letter from the authorities. He was required to account for the whereabouts of the Jeep, Serial Number 012345x. He placed the letter in a neglected drawer of his desk and it may still be there.

Rooney is no longer with us and neither is the original Jeep, made for the Armed Forces by the Willy Company. It was ubiquitous. If there were men and women in uniform around, there were also Jeeps. In the post-war years the original design was replaced by a somewhat bigger one. "Improvement" always means "bigger." This short film uses the first-person narrative (by Pat O'Brien) to describe the Jeep's development and capabilities. No mention of the prevailing belief that it rolled over on top of the occupants too easily. It's kind of entertaining to see these boxy things, so unlike any previous or existing automobiles, schlepping cannons and trailers and bouncing up and down, taking flight sometimes, swimming across rivers, being packed into cargo airplanes.

One kind of misses that robust simplicity. Now we're using SUVs too big to fit into the garage because of the 20 mm. cannons on top.

An amusing short that contains some spectacular off-road shots of the Jeep, narration by the Jeep itself. Interesting and likeable, obviously a response to the publics interest in this revolutionary new vehicle at the time. Also has some good shots of rare early jeep models (Bantam etc)

This is one of 50 films included in the DVD set "Treasures from American Film Archives (2000)". It's a documentary about the Jeep--and, oddly, it's told as if the Jeep itself is narrating the film! That is a pretty weird idea but it actually worked great. As you see the many crazy and difficult jobs this general purpose vehicle did, you can't help but admire the ingenuity of the car maker and designers. I was also surprised to see the likes of Laurel & Hardy and Claudette Colbert driving about in them for Bond Drives as well as Roosevelt and King George VI riding in them around the globe. I don't know exactly who the intended audience was for this one, but it was truly inspiring and exciting to watch even today--almost 70 years later.