ferbs54 Based on the real-life war exploits of American soldier Al Schmid, the 1945 Warner Brothers picture "Pride of the Marines" tells a very moving story of bravery and personal triumph. The film was a huge box office hit back when, and for good reason. In it, the great John Garfield plays Schmid, and the actor had spent a good deal of time with the wounded warrior in his preparations before filming began. The result: Garfield turns in a performance here that is an Oscar-worthy one.The film cleaves pretty evenly into four discrete sections. In the first, we see Schmid in his hometown of Philadelphia, rooming with a young married couple, Jim and Ella May Merchant (played, respectively, by John Ridgeley, Eddie Mars from "The Big Sleep," and Ann Doran, the child psychiatrist from "Them!"), and their young daughter, Loretta. Ella May is constantly trying to play matchmaker for Schmid, and one day has her friend Ruth Hartley come by for dinner. Al and Ruth do not exactly "meet cute" in this film; as a matter of fact, their first date is marked by bickering, wrangling, insults and general nastiness. But somehow, the two DO manage to take to each other, as Al begins to wear the beautiful young woman down. And as played by Eleanor Parker, 23 years old here, Ruth certainly is a beauty indeed. All seems to be going well until a radio broadcast announces the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a news flash that does not bother the Merchant household overly much; indeed, none of them even seem to know where Pearl Harbor is! But Al wastes little time in signing up for the Marines, shipping off just after he and Ruth declare their love for one another. "I bet it would be more fun shooting Japs than bear," Al declares before he leaves, and brother, does he ever get a chance to do so!In the film's second section, we see Al's harrowing experiences at Guadalcanal in 1942. He and two others, NYC Jew Lee Diamond (another convincing "everyman" portrayal by the great character actor Dane Clark) and Johnny Rivers (Anthony Caruso; Bela Oxmyx from the classic "Star Trek" episode "A Piece of the Action"), bravely defend their machine gun nest against hundreds of advancing Japanese, but Rivers is killed in the battle, Diamond is severely wounded, and Al...well, he seems to be doing well, killing no fewer than 200 (!) of the enemy, until a grenade that is exploded very close to his position results in his near-total blindness. In the third section, an understandably bitter and depressed Al is shown in the veterans hospital in San Diego, where he is assisted by a kindly rehab officer, Virginia Pfeiffer (Rosemary De Camp, from William Castle's "13 Ghosts"). Al decides to call it quits with Ruth, not wanting to be a burden on her. Finally, in the last section, Al returns home to Philly to be awarded the Navy Cross, and Ruth and the Merchants make a desperate attempt to make the despondent war vet feel loved and wanted."Pride of the Marines" was expertly helmed by director Delmer Daves, who had earlier worked on the WW2 film "Destination Tokyo" and would go on to direct such classics as "Dark Passage" (one of this viewer's personal faves), "Broken Arrow" and "3:10 to Yuma." He elicits wonderful performances from all his players and incorporates some startling elements into his film as well. He makes the jungle-fighting sequence truly nerve wracking and does a fine job with Schmid's surrealistic dream sequence (utilizing negative images). The film contains any number of very fine scenes, besides that trippy dream segment and the Guadalcanal carnage. In one, the wounded vets in San Diego talk about their fears of returning to civilian life and their doubts about ever landing a decent job, beating "The Best Years of Our Lives" to the punch by a good 15 months. In another, Ruth desperately tries to convince Al of her devotion, lying next to him beside a fallen Christmas tree. And then there is the final scene, in which Al receives his Navy Cross while Ruth watches; a very moving segment, indeed. But if there is any particular element of the film that most contributes to its success, it would have to be the exceptionally fine performances of both Garfield and Parker. Garfield had just starred with Parker the year before in "Between Two Worlds," and in the next four years would appear in a string of classic films, including "The Postman Always Rings Twice," "Humoresque," "Body and Soul," "Gentleman's Agreement," "Force of Evil" and "We Were Strangers"; a truly remarkable streak. As for Eleanor, I had never watched her in a '40s film before (I believe 1950's "Caged" was the furthest back I'd ever seen this terrific actress), and was very happy to discover that she was both remarkably beautiful here ("Yeah, that's a nice face," Virginia declares of her photograph, and for me, that face would only grow more beautiful as Parker advanced into the 1950s) and more than capable of holding her own in dramatic scenes with the dynamic Garfield. Parker had only been a screen actress for three years at this point, but her talent is simply undeniable here; anyone could tell that this young actress would be "going places" soon enough....

Edgar Allan Pooh " . . . than bears," 'Ordinary Joe' Al Schmid tells his girlfriend Ruth on the eve of his WWII enlistment into the U.S. Marines. This interchange came in a fact-based movie made the year that America nuked Japan twice, decades before Congress enabled Japanese companies such as Sony to wrest control of the major U.S. film studios and rewrite history to their liking. Since kids today wouldn't be caught dead watching black and white flicks, the only version of The Truth they get is a pack of revisionist lies. If it were possible to hijack a lecture hall full of American college students and compel them to sit through "PRIDE OF THE MARINES," there might be hope for us. However, more than half of such a captive audience would be comprised of "exchange students," sent here to learn our vulnerable spots. Perhaps clairvoyance of today's realities (or of his own assassination a few years later by rabid Congressman Joseph McCarthy) helped actor John Garfield instill so much anger into his character, real life hero Schmid. Sure, Al's a little upset when circumstances force him to gun down 200 Japanese troops in just four hours on Guadacanal (far above his native Pennsylvania's bag limit for bears), despite being blinded by a grenade exploding in his face. But right up to the happy ending, he's "loaded for bear," and rightfully so.

jkampion As I watched, midway into 'Pride of the Marines' about these wounded soldiers back from Guadalcanal, I found myself embarrassed by this film and the bunch of "swell" wounded Marines discussing the difficult times that would be facing them as wounded veterans in their communities and in finding jobs when, in the background, another group of wounded soldiers break out in song:"In the evening by the moonlight When the darkies work was over We would gather round the fire Till the whole cake it was doneIn the evening by the moonlight You could hear those darkies singing In the evening by the moonlight You could hear the banjos ringin'"It certainly did remind me who we weren't fighting for. And, considering those lyrics, I was surprised that I wasn't able to find any reference to, or explanation of, that particular scene in any of the film's criticism.

Michael Bo In the immediate aftermath following World War II, sound minds in Hollywood tried to distance themselves from the mindless flag-waving that is a natural ingredient in a war effort. "Best Years of Our Lives' and even 'Gentleman's Agreement' investigated the way Americans looked at themselves in the wake of the war, but Delmer Daves' "Pride of the Marines" beat them to it.The film is about Philadelphia smart alec John Garfield who goes to war as a marine and after a nightmarish evening in a foxhole, with Japanese soldiers eerily crying out at him and his buddies "Mariiines, tonight you die!", he is blinded by a hand-grenade, and dumps his girlfriend back home rather than have to depend on her after coming home.Delmer Daves is uncompromising in his depiction on these men who are brave, as it were, almost by coincidence. They are there, in the foxhole, and when shot at, they react. So much for heroism, but they get the job done. And then comes the self-pity, the dark, gloomy sense of humor. Garfield is in angry denial of his blindness and the film makes no excuses, "There's no free candy for anyone in this world", as his buddy tells him. The same guy, a Jew, played by Dane Clark, reminds him, "In a war somebody gets it, and you're it. Everybody's got problems! When I get back, some guys won't hire me, because my name is Diamond".Great movies are made with guts like these, and if the first half hour of 'Pride of the Marines' fails to rise to the occasion completely, from then on it evolves into a true work of art. You weep, and you ponder, you ache and you hope against hope. Well, simply: art.