Tom Brown of Culver

Nobody ever WINS the Congressional Medal of Honor. Nobody in their right mind "competes" for such Valor that usually ends in death.

One is a RECIPIENT of the Congressional Medal of Honor, and that is how it is properly stated. We had a banquet with all living MoH Recpients who could make it to Buena Park, California in about 1990. Some of the most humble men you will ever meet. Not one felt they "deserved" the MoH. But they showed true "Valor Above and Beyond the Call of Duty, Without Regard to Their Own Life or Safety".

When someone says "Wins the MoH" it is like "nails on a chalkboard", since not one person in all the years it has been bestowed has "Won" it but instead Received it from a Grateful Country.

I have no idea why the main character and actor who plays him share the same name. As far as I can tell, there's no reason at all, which seems to make even less sense when one of the more prominent secondary characters also shares a name with his actor. Beyond that weird quirk, Tom Brown of Culver is a meaty drama about the younger generation learning the faults of the older generation, set on the grounds of a military academy in Indiana. I find it interesting that both Wyler and John Ford made movies about military academy life at about the same point in time (Ford's was Salute), though while Wyler's falters in its ending, it's the superior film overall.

Tom Brown (er...Tom Brown) is an itinerate young man who makes ten dollars after a lost boxing match, spoiling himself afterwards at the diner owned by Slim (Slim Summerville), a former military cook. Following Brown are a pair of military officers who seem to know who he is, the son of Doctor Culver, a Medal of Honor recipient who died in a bombing raid during WWI. Tom barely knew the old man, but he carries around the medal with him, treating it unimportantly since he thinks little of his father going off to get killed, leaving his mother to die of a broken heart, and him to nearly starve on the streets. The medal won't feed him. Out of respect for his father, the officers offer Brown a place at Culver Military Academy, and Tom signs up at the insistence of Slim, who served with Doc Brown (they call him Doc Brown, which is a fun little thing to note after the release of Back to the Future many decades later).

The dramatic meat of the film is about legacy. The main focus is Tom, figuring out how to exist in this place steeped in history (granted the place was only about 40 years old at the time) with traditions and expectations for respect of the signs of the place. That gets manifested most potently when Tom gets into a row with his roommate Robert (Richard Cromwell) over saluting a gold star emblazoned on the ground outside the library. Tom won't do it because he sees no point. Robert demands it because his own father's face is hanging in that hall as a former student having fallen in combat and respect is demanded of the cadets at the academy. It turns into a quick brawl, but Tom takes the blame when the superior officer shows up to stop the fight and mete out punishment.

There are another couple of small subplots that seem to be designed to feed into the central idea as well. The first involves Robert being obsessed with the singer Dolores Delight (Betty Blythe), leading to him heading to Indianapolis on the day they're supposed to report back to barracks at the end of Christmas holiday, leading him to be AWOL, which Tom tries to cover for. The other is Ernest Carruthers (Norman Phillips Jr.), one of the younger cadets who is always writing to his mother who receives news during the year of his mother's death. It's a very nice little moment for the actor when it happens, and there's a good look at camaraderie among the cadets, even when Carruthers had been an object of derision through the early academy scenes. However, I'm not really sure how either really feeds into the central thematic focus of the film. They seem ancillary, at best, instead of complimentary.

The film really gets interesting when it turns out that Doc Brown (H. B. Warner) is not dead. I would call that a spoiler, but every synopsis of the film leads with this even though it doesn't come up until halfway through the film. I guess implications of great drama around a hero father turning out to be a coward are more exciting than a son learning to live under the shadow of his father's legacy. Anyway, there's a very good look at what legacy actually means, this interaction between myth and reality that the younger generations have to navigate when looking to its fathers, and the father, come back to try and connect with the only family he has, has to deal with the idea of destroying the myth of himself to reveal the truth of himself. The immediate character resolution is something I quite like, with Tom finding a way to accept his father without damning everything else he's grown to accept in his life in the military, a certain middle ground of acceptance. And then the film goes for some kind of easy ending where everything is happy and it doesn't actually make too much sense. There's a forgiving nature towards a deserter that the US military would probably have trouble simply forgiving so easily. It's an ending that the movie leading up to it didn't deserve. It deserved better. It's a nice ending, even if it doesn't make much sense, that warms the heart nonetheless.

There's a surprising complexity to the thematic approach of Tom Brown of Culver, one coming from an artist obviously looking to push the cinematic medium in a more mature direction after having started by making a series of low-rent Westerns for Universal (the one I've seen was quite good, to be honest). He was on the right path, if you ask me.

Tom Brown Of Culver is a story about a young man and his experience at Culver Military Academy. In the title role of Tom Brown is an actor who is named Tom Brown. During his career Brown suffered the same problem as Mickey Rooney, his short stature and youthful appearance kept getting him cast as kids well into his thirties. He also didn't have quite the talent of a Mickey Rooney.

Brown as Brown is a role that Mickey Rooney would have feasted on at the other end of the decade. Brown's a knock-around kid literally during the Great Depression, earning a living boxing. When at Slim Summerville's hash house he brings out his father's Congressional Medal of Honor, in one of those movie coincidences, it turns out Slim was a sergeant in his father's outfit. The father was a doctor who was later killed in action when an artillery shell hit the field hospital in World War I.

Through the efforts of Summerville and some officers from the Academy, the American Legion sponsors young Tom at the Academy. After this the film becomes a Boystown like odyssey for young Mr. Brown.

Among the cadets are Alan Ladd who is an extra and if you look hard you might spot him. Another with a couple of speaking lines is Tyrone Power, IV. Ty is billed that way because in fact he was the fourth actor with that name. It was his sound screen debut and he was three years away from Darryl Zanuck signing him as the number one box office attraction for the new studio of 20th Century Fox.

There is one other actor who has a key role in the film, H.B.Warner. But the plot is such that if I talk about his role it spoils the whole film. His performance as a shell-shocked veteran though is a good one.

Like Boystown where Mickey Rooney has a visit from a family member that puts him in crisis, so does Tom Brown Of Culver. The ending though is resolved a little too neatly. The army does not work with that kind of speed.

Still a chance to view a pair of movie legends at the beginning of their careers might prove an irresistible temptation to view Tom Brown Of Culver.

"Tom Brown of Culver" is more confusing than it needs to be. The main character, named Tom Brown, is played by an actor named Tom Brown ... but he clearly isn't playing himself. Were Universal Studios planning to build up Tom Brown (the actor) with a starring vehicle? The fact that this movie's plot vaguely resembles that of Thomas Hughes's coming-of-age novel "Tom Brown's School Days" only adds to the confusion.

Tom Brown (the fictional character) is a Hoosier lad who takes any work he can get, to help his widowed mother. Tom's father "Doc" Brown was killed in action during the Great War, when Tom was an infant. Tom has nothing to remind him of his father except his Congressional Medal of Honour, awarded posthumously.

The local American Legion post sponsor Tom's induction into Culver Military Academy. Tom has no interest in a career as a soldier, but he accepts the posting so as to get free room and board. At this point, I expected the film to enter "Tom Brown's School Days" territory. But instead...

SPOILERS COMING. ...the film veers sharply into melodrama with an unexpected plot twist. Tom's father has been alive all along. "Doc" Brown (an overacting H.B. Warner) deserted under fire, trading his military I.D. with that of a battlefield corpse. Shell-shocked, a nervous wreck ashamed of his own cowardice under fire, it has taken "Doc" Brown all these years to work up the nerve to seek out his son and his "widow". By this time, Tom has been instilled with a sense of military honour and duty. He knows that his scholarship to Culver is due to his father's heroic war record. When he learns that his father was actually a deserter, Tom knows that he must resign from Culver. But then he gets a surprise...

Tom Brown (the actor) gives a stand-out performance as Tom Brown the cadet; I regret that he never again got a role as good as this one. Much of this movie was actually filmed at the Culver Military Academy, and the authenticity greatly enhances the movie.

The script avoids all of the most obvious old clichés, but replaces them with some brand-new clichés. The plot about the long-lost father is ridiculous. A subplot concerning Tom's room-mate and an actress (named Dolores Delight!) goes absolutely nowhere. Richard Cromwell is excellent as the room-mate, and there are several other fine performances by young actors (including Tyrone Power and Alan Ladd in small roles). The young actor who plays underclassman Carruthers (in another subplot that goes nowhere) is extremely impressive.

Comedian Slim Summerville gives one of his best performances, in a serious role that gives him one very funny line about a lady named Annabelle. Lew Kelly (a vaudeville monologist) is hilarious in a brief scene that seems to belong in some other picture. The film begins with a sincere dedication to America's servicemen. I liked everything about "Tom Brown of Culver" except its ludicrous script. I'll rate this movie 6 out of 10.

If this movie were made nowadays, I can imagine the ad campaign: "Tom Brown **IS** Tom Brown!"

Interestingly conceived but erratically realized mixture of melodrama and documentary as the American Legion pays for a scholarship to Culver Military Academy for Tom Brown in honor of his Medal-of-Honor-winning father. The script is a little too neat and episodic, however, and apparently the young actors were not up to Wyler's 90 takes to get the scenes right, so some of the scenes are a bit misjudged. Watch for an incredibly young Tyrone Power Jr. in his screen debut and an uncredited and very funny cameo by Eugene Palette.