We’ve Just Begun To Fight

I don’t know about anyone else, but discovering old-time radio was a real ear-opening experience. OK, yes, that’s a lame pun, but I couldn’t resist.

Anyway, when I found the now sadly out-of-print Radio Spirits collection, America At War, I encountered a whole raft of Lux Radio Theatre versions of movies I had never heard of. Wake Island. The War Against Mrs. Hadley. Pride of the Marines. Salute To the Marines. So Proudly We Hail! Air Force.  And of course, the program based on today’s film, The Navy Comes Through. Thanks to Warner Archive, this 1942 movie is finally accessible and needs lots of attention. It’s not only a good story, but it’s one of the few films of the period to pay tribute to the Merchant Marine.

It opens in 1940 at a Navy tribunal, where Lieutenant Tom Sands (George Murphy) has to account for an explosion on his ship and a salvo he supposedly had repaired. Since the men who repaired it are dead, Sands is found negligent and resigns.

Outside the hearing room nurse Myra Mallory (Jane Wyatt) waits for Tom, and she’s heartbroken when Tom tells her they probably don’t have a future together. Myra’s brother, Chief Gunner’s Mate Mike Mallory (Pat O’Brien) tells her to let Tom go. He’s never liked Tom, especially once he started dating Myra, and because of the incident on the gun salvo Mike likes Tom even less.

Fast forward a year to the carnage at Pearl Harbor and the United States entering the war. Tom has enlisted in the Navy, and lo and behold winds up in Mike’s outfit. Mike’s opinion of Tom hasn’t softened one bit and he still wants him to stay away from Myra. Myra doesn’t agree because the Navy gave Tom a chance and she thinks Mike should, too.

Mike’s outfit is sharing a battered freighter named the Sybil Gray with a group of Merchant Marines, and the Navy men are pretty embarrassed by it, but they’re a good crowd. They’re types, but they’re a good crowd. Mostly, anyway. They’re suspicious of Tom because he used to be an officer and they all know about the accident.

Other than the personal dramas, the men have to make their own entertainment. One of them, Duttson (Jackie Cooper) has brought his homemade radio along and the men use it to listen to music and Dodgers games. It also picks up some jibberish called jumblecode, which Duttson tries to decode. That will be important later.

The men are also awfully green when it comes to manning a gun turret, so they spend all their time drilling. There’s a certain urgency to it because one of them talked a little too freely about the Sybil Gray right before shoving off, the wrong ears overheard, and now the Germans are after them.

Well, that and Mike won’t let them do anything else. When Bayless (John Maguire) gets wounded in a skirmish with the Germans, Myra, who’s enlisted in the Naval Reserve as a nurse, comes aboard with the doctor to take care of him. All the guys have big eyes and goofy smiles until Mike tells them Myra’s his sister.

Tom, meanwhile, has to work below because Mike is still down on him and wants him to stay away from Myra. He’ll get more than a chance to redeem himself soon, though, and a lot of German subs will explode as a result.

It’s no secret that we had a little confidence problem early on in the Second World War, mainly because we were unprepared from a military standpoint (The United States still had mounted cavalry regiments when we joined the war in 1941.), and we had seen a lot of bad news in 1942. The fall of Bataan and Corregidor and the subsequent Bataan Death March, for instance, left Americans feeling morose and guilty because civilians and military were now in the hands of the Japanese.

Ergo, the public was clamoring for movies that showed American soldiers as brave and gallant, even if the fight was a losing one, and this persisted for most of the war.

Plus we needed reminders about how we were supposed to conduct ourselves in wartime. The movie is about as subtle as a Doodlebug when it cautions people not to talk about sensitive topics in public: The German who overhears is even sitting in front of a “Loose Lips Might Sink Ships” poster. Yup, no question there as far as what the movie is driving at. Nope. None.

The movie’s second less-than-implied message is, and this one seemed to be directed at the servicemen: Don’t try to play it cool when saying goodbye to loved ones, even if the other guys are watching. “Go say goodbye to So-and-So right” is said enough that it’s almost a bit, but the movie is sincere about it. Give Mom and Dad big hugs and don’t stop them from using pet names. Give Miss Significant Other a real kiss. It might be all everyone has to hold onto for a while beyond letters and the odd furlough.

Finally, and this was probably the strongest message of the three: Americans were going to be a tough bunch to beat and we were just getting started.

Speaking of just getting started, it’s fitting that Jackie Cooper was in The Navy Comes Through, as he would go on to actually serve in the Navy from 1943 until 1945. Instead of a radio, he had a drum kit, entertaining Navy men in a specially-formed military band, playing everywhere they could.

Getting back to the movie, though, RKO seemed pretty confident in The Navy Comes Through, which was based on a 1939 short story, “Pay To Learn,” by screenwriter and author Borden Chase. It’s pretty much impossible to find today, but it’s easy to see what was changed and added for the film: The short story likely focused more on Tom Sands’ trouble with the Navy and obviously didn’t include the part when Sands enlists because of the war, although even in 1939 this wouldn’t have been too far-fetched.

RKO promoted the movie as a prestige picture, with a premiere at Treasure Island in San Francisco and spreads such as this one in the November 25, 1942 issue of The Exhibitor:

Despite the big buildup, The Navy Comes Through received mixed-to-favorable reviews. The New York Times said it was “at best, a left-handed compliment,” adding that, “But it seems to this spectator that a picture dealing with such a hazardous occupation as getting munitions through the submarine zone of the Atlantic calls for something more inspiring than the comic-strip daring that the scriptwriters unblushingly thought up in this case.”

The public didn’t agree, though, and the film brought in a respectable $3.5 million at the box office, or $111 million in today’s money, and the Motion Picture Herald even claimed the movie’s Hollywood audience cheered for the movie as well as giving it their full attention. The film was nominated for a Best Special Effects Oscar and was also adapted for the radio three times–once on Anchors Away, only it starred Henry Fonda, and twice on the Lux Radio Theater (listen to the first version here).

Since then, except for the occasional showing on TCM, Navy has gone mostly unnoticed, probably because it was thought the film had served its purpose and no one would be interested.

Personally, I think it’s a great find. It’s not only a World War Two time capsule, but after hearing the radio show so many times, it’s like meeting an old friend. My only beef is that the characters repeat each other’s lines pretty frequently; however, it’s not a big deal. Anyone who sees this movie will find a lot of familiar faces and some nice surprises.

Another post is coming out on Friday. Thanks for reading, all, and have a good one…

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The Navy Comes Through is available on DVD from Amazon.

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