The Rear Gunner

Following Pearl Harbor, Hollywood rushed to turn out films that would help to win the war. They produced more than features. There were countless cartoons and short subjects that were intended to inform the public, boost morale, encourage support of the Red Cross and other organizations that were helping at home and over seas or recruit men into the service. There were also films that were shown only to members of the armed forces. These films either trained them or entertained them.

"Rear Gunner" is one of the best examples of how Hollywood pitched in and worked to boost morale and also recruit men into the service. It has a mission and it does it with pride and a very solid conviction. This film is a real time machine of its era showing the American attitude towards the war. It is also interesting to get a glimpse of just what a rear gunner did and how he learned to do it.

Burgess Meredith was one of the finest and most versatile film actors of the 20th century. Unfortunately most people today know him only for his appearance in the "Grumpy Old Men" films. In "Rear Gunner" he takes a part that is about as standard as they come. There's very little in the words to indicate anything about Pee-Wee's personality. But Meredith takes this shallow part and makes Pee-Wee a real guy. He's quiet and smart without a hint of arrogance, exactly the kind of guy Americans at least claimed to admire then. And Pee-Wee's gentle stutter works well because Meredith soft pedals it thus making it seem real.

"Rear Gunner" allows us to reach through the screen and touch the American mind from WWII. It also happens to be entertaining.

Interesting and informative brief war-time documentary that takes through aerial gunnery school with a Kansas boy, Burgess Meredith, who learned how to shoot by downing crows that were eating his crops. Ronald Reagan is the captain who encourages him. Tom Neal is an instructor. Classmate Dane Clark is as close as the production should get to a stereotypical New York wise guy.

It's not bad, for what it is. I believe there is a feature film floating around in the ether starring Chester Morris in "Aerial Gunner." It covers much of the same ground as this training camp film but is mucked up with an unnecessary romance and equally gratuitous conflict among the men.

You know why it's interesting? Because every young boy wants to shoot a gun. They don't necessarily want to kill anyone. They just want to hit a target with a projectile. The dynamics of baseball are identical. The bat moves; the ball moves; and you try to hit one with the other. Golf likewise involves making a projectile (the golf ball) move to its target (the little hole in the ground with the flag sticking out of it). Bocce ball and darts ditto.

There's no drama in the film. It's not like Randall Jarell's "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner."

"From my mother's sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose."

This is a flag waver from beginning to end and the viewer has to put up with a bit of corn, but the film isn't long. And it does have an educational narrative.

"A short film bout a B-17 gunner starring Burgess Meredith and Ronald Reagan. Approximately 20 minutes - B & W."

I guess, back in 1943, you were supposed to join the armed forces after seeing this short film. It's pretty much a recruitment film. Meredith plays a stuttering soldier who finds his place as a rear gunner aboard a B-17. Ronald Reagan plays the part of the pilot.

I found this film on a DVD of WWII films that I bought at Wal-Mart for about five dollars.

It's a great film to make fun of with your friends. Just imagine all the lines from Rocky and Grumpy Old Men that you can quote while watching Meredith shoot down Japanese fighters over the Pacific.

During WWII, various studios made short films for the US military--both to be shown to the American public and to soldiers serving on the front. And, in many of them, various Hollywood actors who were in the service starred in these pictures. Here, Burgess Meredith, Ronald Reagan, Dane Clark and Tom Neal all contribute to making this film for the war effort.

Meredith plays Pee Wee Williams, a private who hates working on the ground crew for the US Army Air Corps and eventually he gets a chance to to to gunnery school, as he wants to be a gunner on one of the bombers. Now it's never said in the film, but this was one of the most dangerous assignments during the war, as tons of bomber crews were killed...and had Pee Wee been thinking only of his life, he would have stayed working with the ground crew! But the film is supposed to encourage patriotism and sacrifice, so Pee Wee is eager and excels during his time in gunnery school and eventually joins the crew of a B-24 bomber.

While many propaganda shorts are high on patriotism and terrible on realism, this one actually is very well made and lacks the over the top jingoism you might expect. My only complaints are minor...such as the use of grainy stock footage late in the story and the relative easy the gunners seemed to have in knocking own Japanese fighter planes. Otherwise, it holds up well when seen today.

By the way, most of the 'Japanese' fighter planes in the film were actually American A-6 Texans, a slow plane used to train pilots.

Pee Wee Williams joins the US Army Air Corps and eventually gets selected to train as an air gunner. We see his training and then how he handles the real thing - aerial combat.

Made in the middle of WW2, so you already know it's a propaganda film. Is reasonably interesting though, despite its marketing-orientation and military inaccuracies. Also has a folksy charm.

Cast includes Burgess Meredith as Pee Wee Williams and Ronald Reagan as the pilot of his B-24.