The Navy Comes Through

As I mentioned at the start of Summer Under the Stars, I've been watching movies either as they're about to expire from the Watch TCM app, or going through them on my DVR. As such, there's a few movies that aired a few months ago on TCM and are about to run again during Summer Under the Stars, my having watched them without realizing they're going to be on this month. The first movie to fall into this category is The Navy Comes Through, which is airing tomorrow (August 4) at 5:00 PM as part of a day of movies with Jackie Cooper in the cast.

Now, Jackie Cooper was more of a child star who kept working as an adult, but who was not as big an adult star. So he's not the star here; instead, the two stars are Pat O'Brien and George Murphy. Murphy plays Lt. Sands of the US Navy, and as the movie opens, it's 1940. Sands has been brought before a board of inquiry because of an accident on the ship he was on. Unfortunately, his good friend and fellow serviceman Mike Mallory (that's Pat O'Brien) testifies against Sands, with this testimony causing Sands to lose his rank and him deciding to resign from the force. It doesn't help the two men's relationship that Sands was in a romantic relationship with Mike's sister Myra (Jane Wyatt).

Fast forward to 1942, as the movie was released that year. Obviously the fast forward means that Pearl Harbor has already been attacked and the US is now a part of World War II. Mallory has been promoted in rank to Chief, about to be put on a ship that's convoying the merchant marine across the Atlantic and providing protection from U-boat attacks. Myra does her part for the war effor by becoming a naval nurse, and even Sands does his part by re-enlisting.

Now, you just know that Sands is going to wind up under Mallory's command, and that this is going to cause all sorts of problems. Meanwhile, everybody, and I mean everybody, does their part for the war effort, including immigrants like Cuban-American Pat Tarriba (Desi Arnaz, who was climbing the ladder at RKO at the time), and violinst Richard "Dutch" Croner (Carl Esmond), who fled Austria when the Nazis came in and is now fighting for America. Cooper plays Babe, who is one of the radiomen or something, as he has a radio and is able to adjust for the sideband phase shifting, revealing a plaintext transmission in German that the Nazis are sending. Now do you see why Dutch is aboard the ship? Never mind the existence of both the Enigma cipher as well as the existence of numbers stations. We really are expected to believe the Nazis are this stupid.

Sands wants to deal with the Germans in one way, while Mallory wants to complete the mission they were sent on. But togther, the whole crew saves the day after some tribulations, and Sands is able to get back together with Myra.

As you can guess, The Navy Comes Through is the sort of pure propaganda designed to maintain morale on the home front and show the US Navy being heroic. Nothing like In Which We Serve here. As such, the story is hokey and dated, but the sort of thing that audiences of the day would have liked. It's the sort of movie that should be seen as a sort of artifact of its time, and not as any sort of great cinema.