dglink Led by a heroic westerner, hundreds of orphans escape a bloody Asian war zone; while "Inn of the Sixth Happiness" comes to mind, Douglas Sirk's 1957 film, "Battle Hymn," has a similar inspirational climax. Unfortunately, Rock Hudson is no Ingrid Bergman, and, frankly, he is no Colonel Dean E. Hess either, who was the real-life individual upon whose exploits this movie was loosely based. Hess was a minister, who harbored guilt for the accidental bombing of a German orphanage during World War II. Despite the support of his glamorous 1950's wife, a perfectly coiffed, made-up, and garbed Martha Hyer, who does wonders with a minister's salary, Hess begins to doubt his religious vocation and re-enlists in the Army Air Corps when the Korean War breaks out. Assigned to train an undisciplined squad of airmen, which is headed up by an old pal, Don Defore, Hess sheds his ministerial tone and becomes a hard ass to shape up the men; however, faster than whiplash, Hess melts into a softy when faced with hungry Korean orphans, who invade the camp. Before long, Hess is diverting military supplies, utilizing government-issue vehicles, and using his own and his men's time in the noble pursuit of aiding the orphans, rather than fighting the war he was sent to win. If the film were true to fact, Hess could have been brought up on charges for misuse of government property during wartime. Produced by Ross Hunter, audiences might expect a movie-star of Hudson's looks and shallow talent to be ably supported by Lana Turner as his wife and Sandra Dee as a Korean in charge of winsome orphans out of Central Casting. However, "Battle Hymn" does offer the daughter of a Welsh factory worker, Anna Kashfi, as En Soon Yang, a Korean-Indian with a yen for Hudson and tenderness for orphans. Sporting a long white beard, Philip Ahn depicts a stereotypical aged Asian, who imparts homilies of quasi-wisdom that sound profound. Veteran Dan Duryea lends a comic touch as a Sergeant, who purloins military supplies, such as chewing gum and candy, for the hungry tykes; with that diet, little wonder the Korean kids look catatonic and dazed throughout the film. After a stilted opening, in which a uniformed Air Force general tells the audience how pleased he is that this story could be told, the glossy production begins, and the Hollywood hokum dreamed up by writers Charles Grayson and Vincent B. Evans unfolds. The trite dialog and clichéd situations suit the wooden acting, which is occasionally interrupted with a strained attempt at humor; occasionally, the mood is so light it resembles "MASH" in its irreverence towards war. Ross Hunter films always have a polished look; the production values are high, and the sharp cinematography by Russell Metty stretches across a Cinemascope screen. Unfortunately, the score by Frank Skinner will have eyes rolling; utilizing "Battle Hymn of the Republic," "Swing Low Sweet Chariot," faux Oriental themes, and bombastic military music, the schizophrenic soundtrack evokes laughter at the wrong times.Whatever the true story of Colonel Hess, which has largely been forgotten by time, "Battle Hymn" does not do him justice. Despite Douglas Sirk at the helm, the film is all surface gloss with a veneer of hokey inspirational overtones; a few standard air-combat sequences interrupt the melodrama with too many head-in-a-helmet shots of Hudson and DeFore. "Battle Hymn" may be on must-see lists for Sirk and Hudson completists and those eager to glimpse P-51 Mustangs, but others will likely find the film a forgettable unconvincing slog.

MartinHafer When the film begins, you see a flashback of Dean Hess (Rock Hudson) as a pilot during WWII. By mistake, a bomb falls off his P-51 and hits an orphanage. He's haunted by this and this might explain why he became a minister after the war. However, he's still haunted by this mistake and when the Korean War breaks out, he volunteers to serve. His job is setting up an airbase for the South Korean Air Force, although much of his energy ends up being spent helping the many orphans displaced by the war. In some ways, the film reminded me of the story "Lord Jim"--a guy makes a mistake and spends his life trying his best to do good and somehow atone for his past. It makes for an interesting film and Rock Hudson is just fine in the lead. Worth seeing and very well made.

Robert J. Maxwell Rock Hudson is a fighter pilot who mistakenly destroys a German church and orphanage during World War II. Haunted by guilt he becomes a minister but finds he's not very inspiring, so he signs up as an Air Force colonel whose duty is to train fighter pilots for the Republic of Korea. Leaving his pregnant wife (Martha Hyer) behind, he takes charge of a small airfield near a Korean village. An old war buddy, another pilot (DeFore) discovers that Hudson has become a "preacher" and angrily ridicules him for it. Hudson befriends one of those archetypal "wise old men" (Philip Ahn) and a pretty Korean/Indian woman (Anna Kashfi). Together they establish an orphanage for hundreds of Korean children and when the settlement is threatened, Hudson arranges for their escape to safety. When he visits them much later, they sing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" in his honor. (Whew.) Around the turn of the century, the Harvard Psychologist William James distinguished between tender-minded and tough-minded individuals. The tough-minded don't want to fail to face up to the physical world. They always strive for objectivity. Consequently, they are often not only irreligious themselves but tend to be insensitive toward more tender-minded people. They constantly step on other people's toes, give offense, and have the tendency to talk as if all tender-minded people did not have a mind at all. That's Hudson's old buddy, Don Defore., A truck filled with innocent children is strafed by mistake. "That's war," says DeFore. That's also the camp's cook. "These kids are a nuisance." Let's tend to the job at hand and get her done.The tender-minded are the system builders who become depressed if they do not have a definite cosmic world view in which they can place the particulars of their everyday life. They need a sense of the spiritual, of the transcendent. That's Rock Hudson and the others who help build the orphanage, idealists striving for a perfect world order.Usually, in war movies of the traditional (ie., older) sort, the emphasis would be placed on life in the Army or Air Force, on battle, on getting the job done. This appeals to the tough minded. But the producers usually found it advisable to include some romantic interludes -- either a foreign woman encountered in the field or flashbacks to love life at home. And sometimes the movies about the war were the other way around, with the families back home trying to cope with the absence of their loved ones or, just as bad, their temporary presence, praying, hoping, caring, worrying, and very tender minded. (Egs., "Since You Went Away", "Until They Sail," "Mrs. Miniver.") It's not impossible to blend the two sets of attitudes effectively. Herman Woulk did it in "The Caine Mutiny" -- the novel, not the movie.In "Battle Hymn" there are some marvelous scenes of airplanes in flight. The later versions of the P-51s were models of grace and pugnacity. And they're well photographed by Russell Metty. But we don't see much of them because Rock Hudson has brought tender-mindedness to the Korean war. It's all about love, responsibility, charity, and guilt -- and it's not well done either.Those little Korean kids are terrible, especially Chu, the two-year old ward of Hudson, who swallows his gum instead of chewing it. He's so cute he's revolting. I adopted a Korean orphan of that age too, but when it became clear after a week or two that he had no interest in a career in medicine or law, I tried to send him back, only to find the arrangement was permanent. If anyone wants to see him in a movie, dig up "Traxx." He's the Oriental kid who looks startled when the star bursts through a door. (I was a drunken cowboy in the downstairs cat house.) But, all seriousness aside, too much time is given over to those orphans. They sing, they play, they eat garbage, they swallow gum. It wouldn't be bad if there had been something original in the treatment but it's all old hat. The colonel's top sergeant is the scrounger who poses as a sailor to steal candy for the kids. (Cf., "Flying Leathernecks," "Operation Petticoat," et al.) Hudson doesn't do a bad job, considering his relative inexperience compared to some of the other players. He gets to pray over two dying bodies and one dead. And he gets to stare with chagrin at a fourth, an enemy pilot he's just killed. Martha Hyer -- her presence in movies is something I could never understand. She's attractive without being staggeringly beautiful or physically interesting. She has the Donna Reed role but can't act very well. Reed at least could bring that mellow Mid-western voice to the part, nasal and throaty at the same time.Both tendencies -- tender and tough -- have extremes. At one end, we can look for title like "Kill 'Em All And Let God Sort 'Em Out!" At the other end? "Please Don't Take My Baby." This one errs on the side of sentimentality and cheapens the effect by making it all so terribly easy.

Polaris_DiB This Douglas Sirk helmed Christian humanist war drama comes courtesy the biography of Col. Dean Hess (Rock Hudson), WWII fighter-pilot turned minister who rejoins during the Korean War to find some sense and faith in his grief over his accidental bombing of an orphanage. It turns out that South Korea becomes the perfect place for him to do it, as hundreds of newly parentless children are without home nor a place to go. First he collects them all in an orphanage run by En Soon Yang (Anna Kashfi), but as territory is lost, he finds himself in with the need to find a haven for 400 children. Luckily, Yang is from an island untouched by the war; unfortunately, transport to that island is rapidly disappearing as the United States forces have to cut and run, leaving little behind them to be used by the North Koreans.Meanwhile, Hess is also right back in the saddle of the war machine, and has to confront his own religion with the needs of war. This happens as these new men, untrained, experience the same sense of guilt and loss that accompanies killing of other people for their country. It is only when one of his own men dies that Hess begins to understand that he is put there more for the comfort and salvation of the dying than for the destruction of other people, and his focus on saving the children redeems him from the atrocities of war.Christianity is layered throughout, from the first scene (a helmet under a religious icon stained glass window) through most of the dialog, but all of it stays focused on the charitable, giving aspects of Christianity and the crisis of faith one can have when confronted with evil and desperation. The movie never strays far from that message and is surprisingly realistic for the times about the Korean War. Whereas we're not confronted with the dirty realism that became familiar in films of the Vietnam era and later, nevertheless Sirk doesn't shy away from showing destruction in violence, and quite purposefully lingers on the corpses of innocents. However, the movie is from an earlier era of classic Hollywood style film-making, and a rather sentimental score underlines the tone of the movie, trying to keep morality high even in the showing of violence.A stand-out scene involves two men taking off during a heavy rainstorm, the planes apt to slip in the mud at any moment. It is one of the finer moments of tension in the movie.Overall, this movie is very good at winning the audience over and keeping a positive, faithful message while confronting the difficulties of war. Modern audiences are used to things being darker, grittier, and bloodier, and such heartfelt and even religious messages can turn many a cynical person off, but nevertheless the movie is well-produced and the message is strong.--PolarisDiB