L'Heure H

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.

Aside from the obvious encouragement to enlist this film has a good story line and contains truth, compassion and heroism. Stand By For Action was based on the book "Cargo of Innocents", hence the inclusion of the women and babies found in the lifeboat. This is one of my favorite roles for Charles Laughton who is quite believable as a crabby naval officer from the early 20th century. It is also a great role for Robert Taylor who portrays a character entirely lost to Americans of the last 50 years; that is an ivy-league, privileged rich young man forced to learn his experience from real working class men who, as Laughton's character exclaims "Built the navy". Walter Brennan appeals to the side of every man who comes to love a ship or car or job for its own sake. Brian Donlevy does an excellent job as the farm boy turned navy captain, and Chill Wills is good as ever as the guy everyone wishes would have been his "Chief". Youngsters need to see this movie because it reflects well on an America known to their grandparents, and the rest of us should review it once in awhile so as not to forget what we once were. Added plus: a thrilling, realistic sea battle complete with "fog-of-war".

Standby For Action finds the two co-stars of Billy the Kid, Robert Taylor and Brian Donlevy thrown together due to wartime circumstances as executive officer and captain of the recommissioned U.S.S. Warren. Apparently the Warren was one of the old vintage World War I destroyers that didn't get traded to the United Kingdom in the Destroyers for Naval Bases Deal that we did with them.

She's a worn out old tub as her caretaker, retired Chief Yeoman Walter Brennan will tell you, but she has plenty of heart and a lot of fight left in her. It's a lesson Taylor has to learn.

Had Standby For Action been filmed at 20th Century Fox, Tyrone Power would have had the role, in fact he did have a similar part in Crash Dive. Taylor's a rich kid whose family connections got him a commission and a job with Admiral Charles Laughton. Donlevy's a career Navy man who rose through the ranks to become a captain, also similar to the role Dana Andrews had in Crash Dive.

The crusty, but wise Admiral Laughton decides that his junior aide could use a bit of real sea duty and assigns him to the Warren to serve under Donlevy. It turns out to be a learning experience for both men.

Taylor and Donlevy give strong and capable performances. Taylor looks the part and in fact the following year he was wearing the uniform of Uncle Sam's Navy and seeing action in the real Pacific Theater. But both these guys had to fight against a pair of veteran scene stealers in Charles Laughton and Walter Brennan.

Laughton dominates every scene he's in and uses every trick in his considerable command to capture and hold the audience's attention. This is not Captain Bligh by any means, yet Bligh was as much a seaman as he was a sadist. This admiral is no such thing, but he knows and loves the Navy he serves with.

No more so than Walter Brennan and the high point of the film is Brennan telling Taylor and Donlevy how much the Navy means to him and how much he wants to serve his country in her hour of peril. At least it's my favorite scene.

The Warren runs into all kinds of problems from rescuing a lifeboat filled with infants to action against a Japanese battleship. Taylor and Donlevy and the crew meet all challenges.

Standby For Action is a good wartime action adventure. Robert Taylor would soon enough be dealing with the real thing.

WW II Propaganda film, good entertainment

This is the story of a young officer (Taylor) dismayed to be deployed on an old ship, a WW I destroyer with convoy escort duty. Even worse, he has to contend with a Skipper (Donlevey) who runs the ship by the book but with unseen compassion and talent. Laughton plays the fleet commander, a crotchety admiral who soon realizes the true caliber of Donlevey tho he is frustrated by the tactics Donlevey takes.

If you like WW II movies this is definitely "OK+"... not great, but entertaining throughout.

Chill Wills and Walter Brennan add to the story with both comic and tradgic portrayals.

Some very good action scenes as well.

I'd Check it out if you enjoy WW II sea stories.

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.