TANKS A MILLION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 155, 12 June 1942, Page 17

TANKS A MILLION

(Hal Roach-United Artists)

TANKS A MILLION belongs to the custard-pie throwing tradition of comedy. Actually, they throw everything but cus-tard-pies, and the comedy is

as refreshingly funny as it must have been in the early days of the cinema when the first paperhanger sat down in his bucket of paste. There is a certain advantage in the laughter that results from action. rather than from dialogue, for no matter how heartily the audience laughs, the next bit of fooling isn’t muffled by delayed-action roars. And it’s good occasionally to find yourself in the safe world of traditional comedy.

the kind of world where you can be sure that the brutal sergeant will be seen eating the dust in the second to last scene, and that ia the last scene the crotchety colonel (heart of gold revealed), will be found giving the Victoria Cross and three extra’ stripes to the accidentally valorous and up till ‘now misunderstood young hero. And knowing all this, you’re free to laugh at the sergeant’s triumphs and the hero’s sufferings because you know that in the end right (or at least the hero), will triumph. William Tracy is excellent as Doubleday, the Information Please railway clerk who gets caught in the draft. He’s rather like Mickey Rooney, but with-

out the latter’s aggravating bumptiousness, and as far as I know, he can’t sing or dance. Then there’s James Gleason as the colonel with mike-fright, who makes an effective first appearance in a toga of towelling, and talks to a hairbrush, and Noah Beery, jun., as the brutal sergeant, who, bereft by the Hays Office of his customary means of selfexpression, has to convey everything by facial contortions, and does it very well. It’s the stereotyped framework of an army comedy, but within this framework the film is refreshing, and gives no reason for supposing that Hal Roach is losing his reputation as the leading exponent of slapstick.