Tarawa Beachhead

TCM did a night of Julie Adams movies some time back. I could have sworn that I recently did a post on one of the other movies that night, although as it turns out that movie is going to be coming up some time later, on the Elvis Presley movie Tickle Me. I've got a different Elvis movie to do a post on since it's coming up on TCM later in the month. In any case, today's post is on a movie I hadn't heard of until TCM ran it the last time: Tarawa Beachhead.

Julie Adams is nominally the female lead here, although she's got a smaller role and doesn't show up until later in the movie since, as you might have guessed from the title, men are the main characters here. The movie opens with the battle for Guadalcanal back in 1942. A platoon of American marines under the command of Lt. Joel Brady (Ray Danton) is storming the island, although they face stiff resistance since the Japanese are hiding in caves on the island. Sgt. Tom Sloan (Kerwin Mathews) thinks a frontal attack on the Japanese is ill-advised, and he's right. When Brady tries just such an attack, the platoon is devastated, with only Brady, Sloan, and one other soldier, Pvt. Campbell, surviving. Worse, Brady shoots Campbell dead, in the back no less, when Campbell runs in horror.

Brady, for obvious reasons, doesn't want news of this to get out, and tries to threaten Sloan not to say anything about it. Back at base, when it's time for the debriefing, Brady tries a different tactic, suggesting that Sloan should be promoted for heroism. Sloan does indeed get promoted and gets sent to a different outfit under a general down in New Zealand away from the action. He doesn't get the chance to tell the truth about what happened, and since he didn't do it immediately, there are going to be questions about it if he does come clean later. But he's still planning on trying to make certain that the truth comes out and Lt. Brady gets what's coming to him.

This is where Julie Adams comes in. Sloan found that Pvt. Campbell had been writing letters to his wife Ruth (that's Julie Adams), and that Ruth lives close to where Sloan is now stationed. So he can go see her in order to deliver the letters, but also to find out more about what's going on in order to get justice for her husband's killing. Ruth lives on a ranch with her sister Paula (Karen Sharpe) and their father. But Sloan has another shock coming to him. Lt. Brady, as part of his duties, went to see the Mrs. Campbell (née Nelson) and the rest of the family to offer his "condolences", not that he's going to tell them the truth about how Campbell died. But Brady took the opportunity to start putting the moves on Paula. This only makes Sloan more determined to take Brady down, and also causes each of them to hate the other even more.

So you can guess what's going to happen next, which is that the two are going to be tasked with going on another mission together, this time on Tarawa atoll hence the title of the movie. The mission might just give Brady the chance to issue orders to Sloan that would lead to Sloan's death. Then again, there's still a Production Code in force....

Tarawa Beachhead is decidedly a B movie, although it's certainly a surprisingly dark idea for such a film. It's not bad, but it is certainly still a B and, as with a lot of these movies, there's a reason why it's not well remembered all these years later.

Charlton Heston does comedy!

Charlton Heston is the sort of actor that when you think of him, you don't necessarily think of comedy, at least not intentional comedy. But he did do at least one, which TCM showed when Heston was their Star of the Month back in October: The Private War of Major Benson.

Heston plays Maj. Benson, who as the movie opens is commanding a bunch of men in some sort of training exercise. He's a decidedly by-the-books officer, making the men drill the portion they're working on over and over until they get it right. In response, one of the men gives Maj. Benson some choice words. The only thing is, Benson can't really do anything about it, since the words are his own words, that he had said in confidence some time back. Except that those words which weren't supposed to go anywhere wound up in Newsweek magazine for all the world to see.

For that, Benson gets called to Washington, where Maj. Gen. Ramsey (Milburn Stone) is exceedingly displeased. To punish Benson, Ramsey gives him a new assignment. Ramsey knows a school that has a junior ROTC program, except that it's not going very well. It's to the point where if they don't pass their next inspection, they're going to lose their ROTC affiliation, and that's going to drive the parents to pull their boys out of the school, putting it in jeopardy. Perhaps Maj. Benson can make the students pass inspection.

And then Benson gets to the school and finds... it's a Catholic military school, run by Mother Redempta (Nana Bryant), who also happens to be the sister of Maj. Gen. Ramsey, which would explain why he knows about this school and its problems. Also there are the new doctor, Kay Lamber (Julie Adams), who is also clearly there as a love interest to Benson; and John (William Demarest), the school's janitor/handyman since the nuns can't do that stuff themselves; and the boys, ranging in age from high single digits to high school age.

Oh, the boys. At this point the movie becomes a fairly predictable piece in which Maj. Benson is strict in part because that's the only thing he knows, while the boys are partly incompetent and partly rebelling against Benson's authority. It's a bit of a surprising cast of boys, too, considering what they went on to: Sal Mineo, David Janssen, and Tim Considine are among them. Considine plays Cadet Hibler, whose father knows a bunch of people in Washington. When Hibler has had it with Maj. Benson's discipline, he and the other boys write to his parents. They come for the parents' weekend, and, finding what Maj. Benson is like, take it to Washington, which threatens Benson's career in the Army.

Charlton Heston is one of those actors who I think wouldn't have been that adept at most comedy. But The Private War of Major Benson is a lot closer to the sort of movie where he's not being so funny as much as having everyone else around him be funny, as well as having a script structured to take Heston's talents and build the humor around that. The movie turned out to be a commercial success, and I think it's easy to see why. It's the sort of material that's comforting because it's predictable.

The Private War of Major Benson was never going to turn Charlton Heston into a comic actor. But it's a good enough movie that's worth a watch.