STAND BY FOR ACTION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 218, 27 August 1943, Page 14

STAND BY FOR ACTION

(M-G-M)

IN which Mr. Tuttle (of Tahiti) and Mr, Ruggles (of Red Gap) combine to form a spruced-up, very en-

joyadie version or "nares Laughton as an Admiral of the United States fleet; and in which Robert Taylor, Harvard-synthetic Lieutenant, goes to sea and likes it, in spite of being subordinate to Brian Donlevy, the officer who came up the hard way, with John Paul Jones as his hero! They may not strike you as real people, but they are amusing people. Picture, then, Lieutenant Taylor playing a beautiful game of tennis, playing a beautiful brace of girls, playing the playboy in the nice soft job as the Admiral’s aide; picture Brian Donlevy, with a hole in his ship, in a fury of impatience to get back to sea; and Charles Laughton in his swing chair saying "Yes, Mr. Secretary, no, Mr. Secretary, quite so, Mr. Secretary" ("That’s what I like about a telephone; gives you a chance to express yourself"), and in three furies of impatience to get back to sea... . But he can help Donlevy: so he makes him captain of the old Warren, recommissioned after 20 years or so as a hulk; and he decides also to help Taylor with a good, sharp kick inte the tough job of first officer on the Warren. Does Taylor like it? Well, he has that Harvard way of looking as though it’s no odds to him. "Makes me feel as if m’ neck-tie’s not clean," says Admiral Laughton, running an uneasy finger round his neck, So the destroyer Warren goes to sea with Commander Donlevy and Lt. Taylor-and Chief Yeoman Walter Brennan (a hat-off to him), who went to sea in the Warren in 1916, served in actions in the North Sea, served at

Scapa Flow, and was pensioned off with his ship. They're in the Pacific and so is the Admiral and so are the Japanese. And so is a lifeboat with 20 orphan babies and two women to be saved, "Stand out all married men with children," says Lt. Taylor to the crew, when he learns with horror that he has to arrange for the welfare of the babies. And that’s a Hollywood knock-out: 20 husky sailors each with a baby te mind. Good comedy -and not overdone. The overdoing comes when first one woman and then the other gives birth to a baby. Last week I complained of a feeling of embarrass des richesses. Complaint repeated foftissimo. ' Of course the Warren goes home covered with glory-as well as babies. Alone she sinks a Japanese battleship, protecting the Admiral’s crippled flagship with a smokescreen, and then tmanoeuvring cunningly (so cunningly that I, for one, couldn’t follow all her crossing and double-crossing) through her own screen, and while she’s getting on with the war, the woman down below gets on with having her baby. Department for the Preservation of Immortal Moments on the Screen: "You are now about to hear," says Admiral Laughton, "a message that will go down into history" as the Warren’s first message after the sinking is received. Hands clasped behind his back, head tilted,

rocking portentously on his feet, he announces the Warren’s histeric words. They are: "It’s a boy!" After that, black coffee in the lounge, so to speak, with medals being presented and everybody saying the only place for a sailor is at sea. The US. Navy carries on; and M-G-M have made a winner.