NR | 1h 45m | Comedy | 1955
Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher probably wrote their screenplay for laughs, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were serious when they nominated it for an Oscar for Best Story.
Hard-as-nails U.S. Army Maj. Bernard “Barney” Benson (Charlton Heston) figures he’s a leader of soldiers because he’s tough on them, in training or in combat. His boss Gen. Ramsey knows that Benson, decorated for saving men under fire, deserves to rise through the ranks, if he could just stop bullying his men and shooting his mouth off about matters he knows nothing about.
Benson’s pearls of wisdom about “overfed and under-trained” army privates find their way into a news magazine. This infuriates the top brass who force Ramsey’s hand. They tell him to fire Benson or punish him with enforced inactive duty. For Benson’s sake, Ramsey chooses the latter. Although rattled, Benson’s too much of a military man to conceive of another career. Sensing a shot at redemption, he marches to his next assignment—the Sheridan Military Academy in California for boy cadets. His task? To discipline them into regaining their Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) rating.
Thing is, Mother Redempta (Nana Bryant) and her Catholic nuns run the academy. And they’re bent on teaching moral values, shaping heart, mind and soul, not just the body. Benson figures he’s still in combat mode and ends up being too hard on the young cadets, even 6-year-old “Tiger” (Tim Hovey).
That sets Benson on a comical collision course with the boys, the nuns, and it seems everyone else, except comely resident doctor Kay “Lammie” Lambert (Julie Adams). Lammy’s convinced that Benson can salvage his career, if only other people would find his good side; amusingly, Benson’s having trouble finding it. Even in peacetime, he’s fighting a private war with himself and, as it happens, with everyone else.
Producers, casting around for a typical “girl next door” to play Lammy, must’ve taken it literally; they paired Iowa-born Adams with Illinois-born Heston. The startlingly goofy Benson character works, in part because Heston’s considered the authority on onscreen gravitas. Hopper shot the film at St. Katherine’s Military School in Anaheim, California. Barring the lead child actors, most of the boys featured are real-life cadets. But it’s little Hovey who’s the charmer.
Fear Isn’t Quite Respect
To Benson, authority is like Ramsey’s swagger-stick, he doesn’t quite know what to do with it. He’s a good man but uses his gruff exterior to hide the goodness that he imagines is weakness. He wields authority by instilling fear. The women on campus, Redempta and Lammy, have no trouble seeing through him. But the boys, like the men subjected to his needlessly grueling army drills, find his style oppressive.Eventually, Benson learns that boys aren’t (yet) men. To build trust, respect must be mutual, and instilling fear isn’t quite respect. When the boys learn that his ethos of excellence is a form of self-respect, their antagonism slowly becomes admiration, even affection. In turn, what he imparts isn’t so much the letter of excellence, but its spirit. They don’t need to be told how to become men, if they’re shown.
Benson lacks self-awareness. Shooting his mouth off isn’t just a habit, it’s a reflex, an explosive trait of someone lacking in social graces, and therefore ignorant of the world beyond his barracks. It’s these scenes that delight more than Hopper’s shots at slapstick humor, which, in comparison, fall flat.
Benson, walking up to his room, spots the portrait of a dignified man. Wanting to sound informed, he asks the janitor, “He looks familiar. Head of the school?” Deadpan, the janitor replies, “Nope, that’s Pope Pius XI.”
At a party hosted by Mother Redempta to meet the parents of students and senior guests, watch what Benson tells a stunned monsignor, the Archbishop’s representative. Later, watch what he tells a gobsmacked Redempta who’s proudly showing him a portrait of the founder of their order of nuns who was canonized in 1853.
Redempta is sure that the chance to be a fatherly figure to 300 boys will be soul-shaping for Benson. Baffled, he blurts, “Look, Mother, I’ll admit I’m married to the army, but I never expected it to go this far!”
Henry Mancini’s score is suitably playful. When little Tiger is called in to meet the commandant because he’s still struggling with “two left feet” in marching drills, a dirge depicts his slow, solemn, scared march toward Benson’s door.
