The shallow six

Another of the movies that's been sitting on my DVR for several months is one from the later part of Alan Ladd's career, a new-to-me war film called The Deep Six.

Unforunately, the first thing I noticed is that the print TCM ran was in 4:3, and considering the image quality, it really did look panned and scanned. (IMDb says the original aspect ratio was 1.85:1.) After the opening credits, we go to Madison Avenue in New York, in September 1942. The war is on, of course, so we've got a lot of women working, such as Susan Cahill (Dianne Foster). One day, she travels out to Long Island to meet with one of the graphic artists, Alec Austen (Alan Ladd). It's quite surprising that he hasn't been called up into service yet, since he was in naval ROTC in college and the navy needs officers like him. Of course, that call up is going to come the following day. In the meantime, Alec develops feeling for Susan even though she's engaged to another man, and spends an afternoon with her on the beach.

Alec does eventually tell both Susan and his mother (Jeannette Nolan in a small part) about the call-up, since he kind of has to lest everyone wonder why he suddenly disappeared. This presents a problem, because Alec was raised Quaker, and Mom's still a practicing Quaker. Now, as you may know, one of the tenets of Quakerism is pacifism, so you might wonder why a Quaker would go into ROTC, but apparently Alec isn't particularly practicing any religion. Alec is stationed aboard the USS Poe, which is scheduled to sail from Brooklyn to San Francisco before heading out to action somewhere in the Pacific.

On the Poe, Alec meets the captain, Cmdr. Meredith (James Whitmore) and the executive officer, Lt. Comm. Edge (Keenan Wynn). Edge is responsible for assigning duties to each of the officers, which includes Alec who has the rank of lieutenant. So of course Edge is going to find out that Alec is Quaker by birth. Edge hates hates hates Alec for this, as he just knows that Alec is never going to be able to be a proper military man. Alec is quartered with the ship's doctor, Lt. Blanchard (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.), although the only true friend he makes over the course of the voyage is CPO Shapiro (William Bendix), nicknamed Frenchy for, well, reasons that are explained although it's not particuarly relevant to the plot.

Of course, the other officers eventually learn that Alec is a Quaker, and it also goes without saying that Alec's ability to perform combat duties are put to the test and found wanting because without that the movie wouldn't have much in the way of conflict or plot development. When the Poe makes it to San Franciso, Alec finds Susan waiting for him. She's willing to marry him now, and I mean now, and is also out there to visit her sister. But then a telegram comes that Susan's brother-in-law has been killed in action, and Alec doesn't want to put Susan under the emotional anguish of wondering where she too will lose a husband to the war.

The final destination for the Poe is Dutch Harbor, in the Aleutian Islands, which is one of the last outposts before the US Navy can head southwest to Japan. Of course, the Japanese did take Attu Island, one of the westernmost of the Aleutian Islands, and that's a plot point in the climax of the movie.

For me, the problem with The Deep Six is that it doesn't feel terribly original. Granted, there's only so much you can do with a war movie, but in the case of The Deep Six the unorigionality felt like a lot of clichés. There's a subplot about an Armenian-American sailor (played by Ross Bagdasarian) that to me came across as particularly tedious comic relief. It also doesn't help that it feels like the stars are mostly going through the motions. So The Deep Six is a decidedly lesser World War II movie.