Good Luck, Mr. Yates

A pretty average wartime movie, but one that gets a mention in Tim Pat Coogan's biography of "De Valera: Long Fellow, Long Shadow".

In 1943, as Prime Minister of Eire, De Valera, made a famous/an infamous St Patrick's Day broadcast to celebrate "The Ireland Which We Dreamed Of": "cosy farmsteads, ... fields and villages ... joyous with sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contests of athletic youths and the laughter of comely maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age."

This fantasy (remembering what was going on at Stalingrad, North Africa, the Battle of the Atlantic and Guadancanal) provoked the US Minister in Dublin, David Gray, to write to President Roosevelt: "Meanwhile the Censor is loose again. The American flag was recently cut out of a film called 'Good luck Mr. Yates' ... Meanwhile I am surrounded by mountains of turf, some two hundred and fifty thousand tons, all brought from the interior with American gasoline. If I go nuts can you blame me?"

A mild teacher at a military school for young boys is keen to elevate himself to hero status by enlisting to fight in WW2. However he is refused entry due to a perforated ear drum, a condition about which he sees an eminent doctor, who assures him that with care, and a little time, is curable.

Due to his enlistment being just postponed, in his eyes, he tells what he believes to be a small lie, telling his former students he has been accepted and is in Army training. He thinks this will be of no consequence because he will soon be accepted.

Guess again, the results of even just one harmless lie lead to chaos in his temporary job at the shipbuilding yards, the military school, his boarding house, the FBI, the military and police.

Claire Trevor's presence is a joy to watch as the love interest, while the rest of the cast are competent.

Another hard to find movie that is worth the time to search for.