Kings Go Forth

One of my recent DVD purchases was a cheap Frank Sinatra box set, which included the movie Kings Go Forth.

Sinatra plays Lt. Sam Loggins, who is serving in the US Army late in World War II in one of the lesser-mentioned campaigns of that war, that being the one in southern France. The French Riviera has already been liberated, as the soldiers are able to go there when they get passes, but the front isn't too far away since the soldiers have to be able to drive back and forth between the front and the coast. As for the war itself, Loggins' forward unit is in need of a new radio man, and among the new soldier arrivals, Cpl. Britt Harris (Tony Curtis) announces that he knows how to operate a field radio.

Harris has a past back in the States, which is that he was a spoiled rich boy who didn't have to do real work, and wound up with no real character, which is why he decided to join the enlisted ranks instead of the officers' corps: he's trying to run away from that past and somehow make things right. But that past also causes some friction with Lt. Sam.

When Sam goes to the coast on one of his passes, he meets a nice young woman Monique (Natalie Wood) who seems to be teaching a boy English. He's surprised that she can speak English, so they strike up a conversation and have dinner together. Sam is obviously smitten with Monique, but Monique is kind of guarded about pursuing a relationship. So when Sam says she's welcome to meet him next week, He winds up being met by Monique's mother (Leora Dana). She takes him back to their palatial home, where he learns about their past, which is that Monique's mom was born in America. Eventually, though, Monique reveals a secret, which is that both of her parents were born in America and that her now-deceased father was black, which of course makes Monique mixed-race, although she looks even less mixed-race than Susan Kohner in Imitation of Life. This is supposedly why she and Sam can never have a real relationship.

Not that Britt cares. He runs into Sam and Monique one night at a jazz club, and he too is taken with Monique's beauty and, once Sam is out of the picture, he starts putting the moves on her. However, Britt having been spoiled rotten back in the States, decides that he can never marry her, although not because of her mixed-race heritage since he's broken off engagements to a whole bunch of monoracial white women back in the States. Sam, and especially Monique, react predictably very badly to Britt's selfishness.

There's still a war on, though, and the Germans haven't been dislodged, so a mission is going to have to go behind enemy lines to get a better fix on their position. As you can guess, it's Sam and Britt who get selected for the mission, even though the two of them are at each other's throats over Monique. Can they resolve their differences, and can Britt finally redeem himself?

Kings Go Forth is a movie that I found a bit of a mess, thanks mostly to a script that doesn't quite know what it wants to do. If Monique's mom could love a black man, there's no logical reason why Sam couldn't love a mixed-race woman; it's also not as if he's going back to the South after the war. And when the revelation is made about Monique's father, her mom consistently refers to him as her husband, and not by his first name, which really struck me. The ending is forced and, again, something that for me strained credulity. All three of the leads try hard, and Curtis probably comes out best, but they're all hamstrung by the script.

Still, you should always judge for yourself. Some of you may enjoy Kings Go Forth more than I did, and the box set isn't terribly expensive for the number of movies you're getting.