SEE HERE, PRIVATE HARGROVE
(M-G-M.)
SUPPOSE one’s first days in the army are much the same as one’s first days at school: disconcerting and painful at the time, but amusing to look back
on. This doubtless explains to some extent the success of Marion Hargrove’s book See Here, Private Hargrove (a bestseller in the Statesin 1942), and its corresponding success as a film. And because the language of experience is pretty well universal, the film will also be well received here. It might be a little better received, I think, if one or two of the soldiers in Private Hargrove’s training camp did ‘not exhibit such an embarrassing tendency to become emotional on the subject of democracy and
the American Way of Life, and how it gets them, deep down inside. In the end it even gets Keenan Wynn, as that cheerful swindler and lead-swinger, Private Mulvehill. And of course it also gets Private Hargrove himself (amusingly. played by Robert Walker), in spite of the. fact that his experience of Army life appears to consist of an almost unbroken round, of kitchen fatigues inflicted on him for infractions of the rules. Nevertheless, this is a better-than-usual war film, if only because it deals not with the actual fighting, but with the men who fight, portraying them as ordinary human beings instead of as supermen.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19450420.2.34.1.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 304, 20 April 1945, Page 18
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224SEE HERE, PRIVATE HARGROVE New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 304, 20 April 1945, Page 18
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