Adventures From My Netflix Queue: War in the Philippines
Now this post isn’t about one movie per se. It’s about two movies that I had put in my queue a while back expecting them to get to me during the fourth of July week, but I lost one of them in the mail and the other was stuck in the short wait queue.
Both deal with the US armed services in the Philippines in 1942 as they made their gallant stand on the Bataan peninsula. One is about the army nurses who served close to the front and helped put the soldiers together to keep fighting. The other is about the navy in particular the PT boat captains that tried to keep the Japanese from closing the supply lines. I had wanted to see these films just for the patriotic feelings it would give me. One did the other not so much.
So Proudly We Hail! was stuck in mail hell. I had to wait that extra week before getting this disc because it was lost in the mail. It would’ve been a great flick to have seen on the fourth, but you can’t have it all.
So Proudly We Hail! was about a set of green army nurses shipping off to Hawaii in December, but routed to the Philippines once Pearl Harbor happened. The unit is lead by Claudette Colbert and they pick up Veronica Lake from a torpedoed ship. Paulette Goddard falls is the third star of the film. She falls in with a hick from the sticks whom she names Kansas. Colbert falls for a corpsman played by Superman, George Reeves. Lake has a dead fiancee who perished at Pearl Harbor, a wicked hatred for the Japanese and a death wish. These nurses care for the wounded throughout those desperate days until they are ordered to the Rock, Corregidor, and finally, flown out to safety in Australia. The film is about the ladies with love in their hearts and a soft gentle hand to ease the pain of the soldiers.
What a movie! It is best to watch and remember that the movie was released in 1943 so the memories were very recent to the audience. And it ends with hope. Will the lovers re-unite? You have to remember Gen. MacArthur’s return in 1944 had not happened yet so the women were separated from the men the loved without knowing if they went on the Death March.
I’ll admit to tearing up at the finale, because I expected a happy ending. Seems I forgot that the ending wasn’t written yet. They’ll keep hope alive was the most I can feel.
4 of 5 stars.
They Were Expendable is a John Ford movie with John Wayne. I expected action. With a title like that I expected some final defensive stand on the Bataan peninsula. Sadly, no.
They Were Expendable was about the PT boat captains who harassed the Japanese. It was also about PT 41 who’s commander won a CMH for helping to transport Gen MacArthur from the Philippines. This was more of a conventional story. Too trite, because I needed John Wayne to start kicking ass onscreen. The only neat part was the PT boat attacks. That’s what I wanted to see, but there was not enough of it.
Again, this film had an army nurse played by Donna Reed (sigh). She falls for John Wayne. Unlike So Proudly We Hail. It is the nurse that we don’t know what happened to her. Is she one of the few that made it off Corregidor? Or did she get caught in the retreat from Bataan? Since I saw this movie after the other, I expected them to meet in Australia (Wayne was sent there to help get the plan set up for more PT boat usage), but they didn’t. Sad.
2 of 5 stars.
