Tyrone Power was one of the people honored in Summer Under the Stars last August. One of his movies that I hadn't blogged about before is The Long Gray Line. With that in mind, I put it on the DVR in order to watch it at some point in the future and do the inevitable blog post. That future is now.
Tyrone Power plays Martin Maher, a real person who at the start of the movie is about to be subjected to forced retirement from his job at the US Military Academy at West Point after 50 years of service to the country. President Eisenhower had been a cadet at West Point before his glittering military career and becoming president, so he brings Maher down to the White House to discuss Maher's situation. Cue the inevitable flashback....
Go back to 1898, when Maher first arrives from Ireland. For some reason, he winds up at West Point instead of New York, and the only job available for a civilian like him is as a server for the cadets in the mess hall, which surprised me since I would have thought the cadets ate cafeteria style or did the serving themselves as part of their duties. Maher is spectacularly unsuited to the work, but sees from the Master of the Sword, Koehler (Ward Bond), that guardhouse duty is a big deal. This, however, requires enlistment, which Maher does.
Some time passes, and Maher is living on base. A civilian there is Mary O'Donnell (Maureen O'Hara), another Irish immigrant who is the cook for the Koehlers. Needless to say, Marty and Mary fall in love and eventually marry, and have the sort of marriage you'd expect from two Irish-Americans in a John Ford movie. Mary is even able to save up the money to bring Marty's father (Donald Crisp) over to America.
More time passes, and we get to World War I. Everybody wants to sign up because that's the patriotic thing to do and what you'd expect from a John Ford movie hitting you over the head with its themes. Indeed, even Marty's father tries to enlist although the real life Marty's father had died some years before. Marty would like to serve in the actual war, but the higher-ups insist that he would be of more service staying at West Point. Among the various cadets Maher has tended to over his 15-plus years at West Point heading off to America are the aforementioned Eisenhower along with other famous names like Omar Bradley and George Patton. There's also the fictitious Sundstrom (William Leslie) who is killed in action, leaving behind a widow Kitty (Betsy Palmer) and infant son (who grows up to be played by Robert Francis).
Sundstrom had won a Medal of Honor in death, and the law allows for the young son of a Medal of Honor recipient automatic entry to West Point on adulthood, not that Mom wants that since she doesn't want to lose another son. But this being a John Ford movie, you know that young Sundstrom Jr. is eventually going to follow in Dad's footsteps and become a cadet too.
Fast forward a bunch more years, to December 7, 1941. Japan has attacked Pearl Harbor and the cadets are told to assume they're at war. But Sundstrom has violated his oath by getting married, even though the marriage was annulled. Marty is able to convince him to do the right thing by resigning his commission and enlisting in the regular army.
We get one more emotionally manipulative scene of Mary's death (which in real life occurred a few years after the end of World War II), and a final bit of hokum after Marty returns from his visit to the White House.
If you want cheap sentimentality and a film that glories in the way it hits you over the head with its messages, The Long Gray Line is a good place to start. John Ford is tremendously unsubtle here both with the doe-eyed view of Irish immigrants, and with the message of service to one's country. And when you think he can't go any further with it, by god he does. As you can tell, The Long Gray Line is the sort of movie I had a lot of problems with, although I can see why it's a film that other people would really like. So watch and judge for yourself.
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