Cry 'Havoc'

What makes the 1943 WWII drama,"Cry,Havoc", offbeat is that it deals with a subject of the war that was rarely talked about then or now. The subject is the struggles and noble sacrifices of army nurses. "Cry,Havoc" was based on a fairly successful stage play, which explains why the film is set primarily in the confines of an underground bomb shelter. However,this doesn't make the film any the less powerful or intriguing. Lieutenant Mary "Smitty" Smith(Margaret Sullavan) desperately needs more experienced nurses at an army hospital in Bataan. Later,several volunteers arrive at Bataan and are willing to do their part for the war effort. Smitty is somewhat disappointed when see learns they aren't experienced. Although, the nurses are willing to work, they aren't fully aware of the hardships and destruction they'll have to face. The nurses' predicament becomes worse when two hospital buildings are hit and bombed by Japanese planes. Their chance of survival becomes extremely slim. This film paints an unglamorous and intense picture of war. Except for a few male extras,the majority of the cast is female. MGM put an ensemble cast of accomplished actresses in the leads. The cast includes: Margaret Sullavan, Ann Sothern, Joan Blondell, Fay Bainter, Marsha Hunt,and Heather Angel. Sothern stands out among the cast. Although, she was a gifted comedienne,Sothern had an immense talent in dramatic areas as well. Here she plays Pat Conlin, a tough, headstrong nurse,who thinks she knows the severity of war. She learns the hard way that isn't that easy and becomes a more sympathetic person because of it. Sullavan gives a fine,realistic performance as Lieutenant Smitty. She's a courageous character that is slowly dying of malignant Malaria. The rest of the cast give unique performances as well. This is one of Richard Thrope's better directorial efforts. He had directed the unsatisfying spy thriller,"Above Suspicion" and the dull sequel to the award-winning classic,"Mrs. Miniver". If you want to see a similarly-themed film,watch Paramount's "So,Proudly We Hail",also made in 1943. It is actually superior to "Cry,Havoc". It goes more in-depth about army nurses' sacrifices and is set in many different areas. "Cry,Havoc" is still very good and makes a compelling viewing experience. I give it an 8 out of 10.

Cry Havoc was based on a play by Allan Kenward which the Shuberts produced on Broadway and ran for a grand total of 11 performances over the Christmas/New Year's days of 1942-43. But what flops on Broadway can sometimes be a great success on screen and vice versa.

In this case the subject matter had already been thoroughly covered in the Paramount film So Proudly We Hail and Cry Havoc runs a distinct second to that film. Like the Paramount film, Cry Havoc deals with nurses in the Phillipines after Pearl Harbor and their experiences during the Japanese attack.

Margaret Sullavan was fulfilling the terms of an MGM contract with this movie. Afterwards she would concentrate on the stage and would only do one more film years later, No Sad Songs For Me. She plays the no nonsense army nurse with several new charges rushed up to the Bataan front among them Joan Blondell and Ann Sothern. Fay Bainter played Sullavan's superior and she also was winding up her MGM contract as well.

There are no substantial male roles in this film, they're seen briefly in fighting roles and of course as casualties. If you don't blink you'll see Robert Mitchum utter a couple of words and then die. Sullavan and Sothern have a rivalry going over an unseen army lieutenant.

In fact on the set they had a rivalry going as well. According to a recent biography of Margaret Sullavan, she and Sothern did not get along so their scenes together had some real bite. Sullavan felt that Sothern was slipping into her popular Maisie character for which she was doing a B picture series for MGM.

Cry Havoc should be seen because anything that has Margaret Sullavan should be seen as she left us way too few films for posterity. But this really is quite inferior to So Proudly We Hail.

The service of more than 100 nurses in the Philippines in World War II is one of the great stories of heroism in war. And the capture of 79 of those mostly Army and Navy nurses is the largest single military imprisonment of women in history. The other 23 were evacuated just a few days before the fall of Corregidor when the Americans surrendered to the Japanese on May 8, 1942.

Two movies were made, and two books have been written about this group, referred to as the "Angels of Bataan." There are significant differences between the films, and the books. An Army nurse, Lt. Juanita Redmond, who was among the evacuees from Corregidor, wrote the first book, "I Served on Bataan." It covered the five months from the Japanese attack of the Philippines on Dec.8, 1941, to the fall of Corregidor. It was published in 1943 and was the basis for the Paramount movie, "So Proudly We Hail," that came out on Sept. 9, 1943. The book and movie were about the ordeal of the nurses over those five months, first on Bataan and then on Corregidor. Although no nurses were killed, some were wounded as the Japanese continually shelled and bombed the Allied defenses.

The second book is more recent. "We Band of Angels," came out in 1999. It was written by Elizabeth Norman, an associate professor of nursing at New York University. Norman did extensive research and travel, and interviewed the remaining survivors in the 1990s. Her book includes the months the nurses tended the wounded on Bataan and Corregidor. It covers the evacuation of nearly a quarter of the nurses by a flying boat and submarine before Corregidor fell. Then it goes into the details of the nearly three years of imprisonment. It ends with the liberation of the women in February, 1945, their return home, and the later years of the remaining survivors.

Another Army nurse, Lt. Eunice Hatchitt, had been tabbed by the military to be an adviser for the Paramount movie. She wanted to dissociate from the film because she didn't like some of the Hollywood touches to the story, especially two romances. So, her name doesn't appear in the film credits. Even with the Hollywood touches, "So Proudly We Hail" is an outstanding movie, in all respects. The recreation of the Malinta Tunnel on Corregidor was most impressive and gave a very real feel to the film. The story is told and seen in a nearly continuous flashback from several of the nurse evacuees on board a ship as they are returning to the States.

"Cry Havoc," is another film altogether. MGM came out with it in February 1944 – five months after "So Proudly We Hail." It was based on a play that ran for just 11 performances over Christmas of 1942. Since Redmond's book was not yet written or published, the play author, Allen Kenwood, probably based his script on news reports and interviews of the evacuees that appeared in the press earlier that year. And MGM apparently didn't want to copy the first movie, so it kept to the fictional script of the play.

In this film, most of the women are not nurses but are civilians who answered a call for volunteers to help the nurses on Bataan. Only a couple of the women are military nurses. They are in charge. Some scenes are outside, and among hospital wards in tents. But much of the action takes place inside a large earthen bunker that served as quarters for the women. The cast, acting and script for this film were quite good. It does have a couple of incidents that are too much of a stretch. And, this film ends with the women being captured in the fall of Bataan.

I agree with other viewers who have compared the two films. "So Proudly We Hail" is the far superior film. But "Cry Havoc" also is a good telling and showing of the peril, ordeal and heroism of women serving in time of war.

"We Band of Angels" is still available from book stores. Noted historian Stephen E. Ambrose, author of "Band of Brothers" and other books, had high praise for it. "This is a gripping book. Elizabeth Norman presents a war story in which the main characters never kill one of the enemy, or even shoot at him, but are nevertheless heroes…They were the bravest of the brave, who endured unspeakable pain and torture. Americans today should thank God we had such women."

The title for this film may have come from William Shakespeare. In his 1599 play, "Julius Caesar," the term appears in a line in Act III, Scene 1. Bereaving the murder of Caesar, Antony says, "Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war."

Assorted characters trapped in a perilous situation, each with his or her own motivations, backstory, hopes and fears, the sort of story ("The Flight of the Phoenix," for instance) that I find irresistible. Thirteen characters, all women - men are entirely peripheral, practically stage props - find themselves trapped in a perilous situation. For that, any danger could do. Here the peril is war. Will they survive? Will they escape? We know (dramatic irony) that even if they survive they will not escape. Very little action occurs. It is not required. We understand the situation. No need to show it dramatically. The story, originally a stage play, is character driven. The situation encompasses everything. How will the women react, each according to her own character, its weaknesses and strengths? That is the strength of "Cry Havoc." That is what makes it compelling. If you prefer a war movie with non-stop action, or a wartime love story, switch to another channel.

It is a women's picture in the true sense, akin to "The Women," "Stage Door," "Tender Comrade," "Caged." Men make fleeting appearances. There is no love story. True, the unseen Lt. Holt is a presence. But he is not a focus. He serves merely to create dramatic tension, to illuminate the characters of two women, Smitty (Margaret Sullavan) and Pat (Ann Southern), whose mismatched personalities clash. The women reveal themselves as they confront the enveloping menace. Andra (Heather Angel) displays courage, Connie (Ella Raines) fear, Sue (Dorothy Morris) intensity, Flo (Marsha Hunt) serenity, Nydia (Diana Lewis) insouciance. The desperate Smitty alone and the commander Capt. Marsh (Fay Bainter), resigned to her fate, realize what is to come. Luisita, the only Philipina in the group (dancer and actress Fely Franquelli) also seems to know. Surrender approaches. Only she hides her face in despair.

We know more now than the screenwriters knew then. We know what awaits: the death march, mistreatment, possibly rape, evidence that only became apparent at the war's end. The Japanese, perhaps for that reason, but surprisingly for a war movie in wartime, are not completely demonized. They are hardly virtuous. They bomb hospitals. They strafe unoffending people bathing in a stream. Still, I have seen far worse denigration in other films. At the end a voice calls out in accented English for the women to surrender. It is not a caricatural voice, not lewd or sinister. The enemy, like the wounded soldiers and Lt. Holt, are a backdrop. The psychological focus remains on the protagonists, their characters, their response to a perilous situation.

"Cry Havoc" was not alone in 1943. Hollywood's other nurses-on-Bataan movie, "So Proudly We Hailed," came out in the same year. It cannot match "Cry Havoc." "So Proudly's" long, rambling tale, told through a flashback with a clinical, newsreel-like voiceover narration, is principally propaganda (the title gives it away) sweetened with a love story. The enemy are emphatically demonized. Men, and how to attract them, are the nurses' constant preoccupation. The story sends its heroine (Claudette Colbert) on an unblushingly sappy, soap-operatic journey. Husband is reported killed. Claudette succumbs to a morbid catatonic depression. She stares unblinking, for weeks. (It's not even clear when or how she enables herself to eat.) She wills herself to die. Of course, husband pops up alive and well, well enough to write her an interminable cloying letter, which we endure until the music mercifully swells to conclude proceedings. Nurse Olivia (Veronica Lake) hates the enemy with such implacable vehemence (her husband had the misfortune to be at Pearl Harbor) that she blows herself up to kill them, hand grenade tucked into her pocket. One film develops character, the other caricature. One, like Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" (Heather Angel was also briefly a passenger on that raft), transcends a war movie. The other remains a wartime curiosity.

During WWII, the various Hollywood studios made a bazillion war films aimed at bolstering the courage and resolve of the American public. Among these pictures were several whose stars were women--often involving nurses or entertainers working with the USO. Warner Brothers' entry into the genre was "Cry 'Havoc'", one that featured a motley crew of non-nurses pressed into service during during the fall of the Philippines. Among these women are the usual stereotypes, such the world-weary and cynical (Ann Sothern) and the stripper (Joan Blondell) and many, many others. The bottom line is that with the likes of Sothern, Blondell, Margaret Sullavan, Faye Bainter, Marsha Hunt, Ella Raines, Frances Gifford and many others, you can't help but have an excellent film. Not quite the distinguished female staff from "The Women"...but rather close...and each woman, on her own, would have been more than capable of carrying a picture.

So is it any good? Of course....the writing, sensationalism and schmaltz all work together to tell the women's side of the war...and tell it very well. It also helps that the film is NOT an ultra-positive look at the fall of Bataan but is rather realistic.

By the way, look for Robert Mitchem who has about a 5 second cameo...saying "I'm alright"...and then promptly dying.