L'Heure H

The story is fiction but the war was very real when this movie was made. While not intended to be a comedy, it has it's moments of humor. I heard it said this was to be a British movie but was switched to Hollywood because Britian was in deep straits and under attack at the time. Whatever the reason, it plays pretty well except for the old US 4 piper destroyer sinking a modern Japanese battleship (not a Japanese destroyer) . Not very likely, but that's Hollywood for you. However, the acting by Charles Laughton is classic. He does indeed steal every scene he's in and that takes some doing when one of the other actors is Walter Brennan. Laughton's John Paul Jones speech to the ship's company is superb and stirring even 60 years later.

-BullMoose

This movie is in many ways reminiscent of several of Robert Taylor's previous films--in particular A YANK AT OXFORD. Like YANK, in this film Taylor is a bit of a "pretty boy" who is more concerned with sucking up to the navy brass and parties than ever going into action. However, with a decrepit old destroyer about to be re-commissioned, his commanding officer (Charles Laughton) assigns him to be the first officer--and help him be a REAL navy man. At first, Taylor thinks this is beneath him and balks at the assignment, but through the film he (not surprisingly) proves he's made of tougher material and by the end of the film Taylor achieves a truly impossible deed--taking out a Japanese battleship with this lowly destroyer.

While there is a lot of predictability about the plot and some silly clichés concerning picking up some women and babies, this film has a lot going for it. First, there are four exceptional actors all at the top of their game (Robert Taylor, Charles Laughton, Brian Donlevy and Walter Brennan). Second, the action scenes were generally exceptional in quality. While some of the scenes were obviously models (particularly before the big battle), most of the special effects were exceptional and really felt and looked real. Third, while formulaic, it was GOOD formula and featured exceptional dialog for a WWII propaganda film. All these elements worked together to make a very enjoyable film.

This was another film which saw preliminary involvement in its scripting stage from Luis Bunuel during the Spanish Surrealist's tenure in Hollywood – before being eventually re-vamped into a standard Hollywood flagwaver (by its blandest studio, MGM, no less). Needless to say, there remains close to nothing of what may have appealed to Bunuel's Communist ideals here; however, given the top talent at work, the movie could not fail to be entertaining (if corny and contrived in the extreme – more on this later); still, the film hardly merited Leonard Maltin's hilariously dismissive single remark in response to the titular command, "We're still waiting…"

In fact, the story and script numbered various noted scribes: John L. Balderston, George Bruce, R.C. Sheriff – all of them, co-incidentally, former collaborators of another of my favorite film-makers i.e. James Whale – and Herman J. Mankiewicz (ditto Orson Welles' CITIZEN KANE [1941]); as for the cast, we have Robert Taylor (stepping in for Robert Donat), Charles Laughton (this phase of his career was particularly unrewarding for the thespian actor, though he would return to this same milieu for one of his very last pictures, UNDER TEN FLAGS [1960]), Brian Donlevy, Walter Brennan, Chill Wills, Douglas Dumbrille, future director Richard Quine, etc. Most of these are strictly typecast, but get by through sheer professionalism and chemistry: the three stars play well off each other, with Taylor the cocky spoiled brat, Laughton the flustered-yet-bemused chief officer and Donlevy the dedicated skipper of an ancient destroyer re-called into active service at the start of WWII (complete with live-in and doting caretaker – Brennan, of course).

Though the film makes much of the initial friction between the captain and his aide, which predictably develops into mutual understanding and, eventually, respect, its real raison d'etre was the subplot highlighting the destroyer saving 'a cargo of innocence' (the title of the story on which it was based and which had originally dealt with the Spanish Civil War!), that is to say, a stranded boat filled with evacuees from a bombed maternal hospital. This results in much cringe-inducing comedy relief – Bunuel would have obviously treated the entire episode much more soberly – with the men all at sea (pun intended) before this unexpected 'crisis'…though, before long, a middle-aged carpenter whose wife happens to be a nurse and guitar-strumming, tune-peddling yokel Chill Wills take the situation firmly in hand; Laughton, commandeering a convoy to which the destroyer has also been appointed (not without misgivings), ultimately softens at this turn-of-events, especially after both rescued ladies proceed to give birth themselves aboard the ship!

As I said, in the face of such far-fetched happenings, to which one must add Brennan's equally sentimental attachment to the "old girl" who can still "take it" (injured at one point and relapsing to his WWI-service days, he still resolves to do his bit for Uncle Sam at the finale!), the film really does not win any marks for realism but, again, is so typical of the prevalent style in which such things were presented (including such racist expressions as Laughton's "slant-eyed Beelzebub" and "pagoda-masted buzzards") that it does not feel necessarily blander than its prototype, if decidedly routine. Nevertheless, the climactic action (yes, we do get there after all) – as the scrappy destroyer risks its 'life' (with Taylor at the helm, too, since Donlevy is himself temporarily disabled) by emerging from the cover of pervasive fog to hit out at the larger Japanese battleship – is quite well done, even garnering the film its sole Oscar nomination.

Robert Taylor, Brian Donlevy, Charles Laughton, and Walter Brennan "Stand by for Action" in this 1942 WW II drama.

Laughton appoints Ivy League Navy man Taylor as executive officer of a World War I warhorse, The Warren, commanded by Donlevy. It's an old ship and needs a lot of repair work, but there are people who believe in it, most notably, Yeoman Henry Johnson (Brennan), who was with the ship in WWI.

En route to meet the convoy led by Laughton, the ship picks up survivors from a Hawaiian hospital - twenty babies and two pregnant women.

I'm pretty sure "Stand by for Action" was supposed to be a stirring propaganda drama, but once the babies come on board, it sort of becomes a comedy. Two different movies and one confused script. Some of the action was good, though.

I tend to watch Robert Taylor films as an homage to my late mother, who loved him. He always reminds me of her - after all, I knew his real name when I was still in grade school. It always cracks me up that he does roles like the Harvard grad in this, or the title role in A Yank at Oxford. He was a Nebraska farm boy who loved the outdoors and horses, something he shared with his first wife, Barbara Stanwyck. But he sure looked debonair. He did make some very fine films, my favorite being Escape, one of his best performances. After the war, he played villainous roles - go figure.

Charles Laughton is great as usual as a commander with a desk job dying to get back to active duty; Brian Donlevy is good as captain of The Warren, and Walter Brennan gives a sympathetic performance as Yeoman Johnson.

This movie needed to stick to one thing - resuscitating this barge and putting it into battle, or taking care of babies and pregnant women.

Clearly, a war time film, as the U. S. had just been pulled into the war, after the bombing of pearl harbor. So the various military branches are revving up for action. Charles Laughton is the admiral who assigns Roberts and Masterman (Brian Donlevy and Robert Taylor) to an old creaky ship from the LAST war. They are not happy about this, but will do as told. Walter Brennan, who was in everything from westerns to Have and Have Not, is in here as the Yoeman. Similar to Universal's Operation Petticoat from 1959. It's pretty good. The usual shenanigans of trying to carry on while keeping the ship held together, under fighting conditions. Directed by Robert Leonard... he was nominated for Ziegfeld and Divorcee.