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 The back of the box tells us that if you are among "those who still quiver
under [Clark Gable's and Lana Turner's] celluloid spell" that this movie is a
"rare treat". Lana is a nurse who falls in love with Gable's World War II army surgeon. Gable has a wife at home though and the box
(quite accurately for once) says that no one is the "heavy" and only blames
"the war for forever altering the lives of those who lived through it". 1948, 113 minutes, VHS
Even now, after sitting through all two hours of this plodding (that's
flimspeak for boring, by the way) war-time drama, I can't look at the video box
and not think that maybe I missed something, maybe it really was a powerful tale
of one man and his transformation from callow surgeon to awakened world
citizen, maybe this was what old-time Hollywood and "they don't make'em like
they used to" was all about. Shoot, just looking at the video box and seeing
the names above the title is enough to make any fan of the golden age of film
drool. Clark Gable. Lana Turner. Anne Baxter. John Hodiak. Just nod in
agreement whenever someone brings up John Hodiak in discussions about ancient
cinema and throw out the fact that he was married to Baxter during the filming
of this movie. Of course that presupposes you know who the hell Anne Baxter
is. If you're better at rattling off Brett Halsey's credits than you are with
Joseph Cotton's, then you'll remember Baxter as the wife of Pharaoh
in The Ten Commandments. The rest of us will no doubt recall her work in All About Eve and The Magnificent Ambersons. Lana Turner is known to us for her daughter killing Lana's mobster boyfriend
Johnny Stomp (hey, I'm a made guy and that's what we always called him down at
the "social club") while Clark Gable is notorious for his bad breath. Combine
these stars with the cover art on the video box which shows Gable and Turner
dressed in army gear and hugging and you just know that this one is about that
kind of love that's really sweaty and desperate and full of smoking, drinking,
and dames getting backhanded while furniture falls all over when the German
bombs start landing. You'll also note that as is usual with these Clark Gable
videos, that the cover art shows his female co-star refusing to look in the
direction of Clark's dog breath. In fact, Lana has this expression on her face
that she'd rather be pawed by anyone, even John Hodiak, than Clark.  It turns out that Lana's apparent repulsion with Clark is just some more of the
"magic of the movies" that we all are treated to whenever we head out to the
bijou, wait for the lights to go down, and watch a star like Martin Lawrence
yell "damn!" and "aww, hell no!" for ninety minutes, because Lana and Clark
were rumored to have "researched" the love affair they had in this movie
several years before. Unfortunately for Clark, this also the same time as he
was married to Carole Lombard, but luckily she got herself killed in a plane
crash on her way to sell war bonds or help out a bunch of orphaned nuns or
something. Though that sounds a bit like the convenient plotting that movies
like, um, this one , used to wrap up a dicey love triangle, it was
actually so upsetting to Clark that he went and joined the army in memory of
his dead wife. He then went and unleashed his pain and sorrow and bombed the
hell out of those Nazi bastards for three years, becoming the
actor-turned-soldier that Hitler wanted to capture alive the most. Clark made
it back okay from the war with a fistful of medals, his discharge papers and
not much else other than a slap on the back from Uncle Sam thanking him for
saving the world. Alienated and disenfranchised from the country he loved so
much, Clark wandered the Pacific northwest getting into tussles with redneck
sheriffs before finally being recruited by Richard Crenna to go back to the
'Nam and bring home the rest of the actors-turned-soldiers who never made it
home. Or am I thinking of John Rambo? I always get him mixed up with Clark
Gable. I think it's all true except that once Clark came back, he made a bunch
of crappy movies instead of holding a town hostage, though is there really any
fundamental difference between that and making me sit through stuff like Adventure and Homecoming?  Clark plays a successful surgeon named Ulysses Lee Johnson, but you'll
immediately know him as Ulysses S. Hunk. Anne Baxter plays his wife, Penny and
together they lead an existence that is so shallow that not only would Ulysses
rather go dancing at his country club than helping out his doctor friend Robert
Sunday fight malaria in the bad part of town, he actually tells this to
Sunday's face without a smidgeon of guilt! In Lee's (that's what they called
him in the movie and it's easier to type than Ulysses) defense, it was his
birthday and while you and I might have to hang out with white trash afflicted
with malaria, hookworm, and chronic unemployment syndrome due to an accident of
birth, why should a rich, hunky doctor do the same? Just so we know how
self-centered these Johnson's are, they don't even have any kids! Egads! I
think it goes without saying that as war rages in Europe, Lee takes an
isolationist point of view, at least until it becomes the hip thing to do to go
and fight for your country. Of course, that was merely an excuse for Penny to
throw a really swanky party and have Lee parade around in his tight army
uniform. What I loved most about this Lee guy was that he got in Sunday's face
at the party and called him out because Sunday wasn't going off to fight Nazis,
but was staying at home to fight malaria. "Damn it, Sunday! Don't you know
that if these Axis powers succeed, there won't even be any white trash with
malaria left for you to save? I hope you enjoy treating Himmler's bunions you
sauerkraut-eating cur!" Sunday holds his own (traitors are sneaky like that)
and cuts what we in the biz call "the money promo" on Lee, telling him that
he's always been a self-centered guy and that he is just *gasp* a four
flusher! When I heard that, I got red in the face and sputtered "four flusher?
How dare you? I should run you through with my sword right here, you
impertinent
cad!" Then I quickly realized I had no idea what the dickens a "four flusher"
was, but this was obviously a source of some concern for Lee because he had to
have Penny assure him later that night that he was no four flusher. The only
thing I could think of when I heard "four flusher", related back to about a half
hour after I ate that two pound burrito last weekend, but I just chalked that
up to some weak plumbing (both mine and my trailer's!).  Well, Lee goes off to war and meets up with a mouthy blonde nurse named McCall,
thus kicking in the annoyingly uncharismatic Bickersons part of the movie.
Since
Lee's real name is Ulysses, this is purportedly a re-telling of the Ulysses
myth. I guess that means the way war and adventure and blonde nurses can
transform a man from soulless jerk into a sensitive and thoughtful guy who
smiles warmly a lot and decides that the welfare of his brother man (and blonde
nurses) is really his concern. That's just a guess since any time someone
starts talking about re-telling a myth, I just know they're going to start
babbling about some loser named Joseph Campbell and things are going to
degenerate into a lecture. Jesus, I'm just here to see Rhett Butler blast Nazis
and pump lusty nurses! Besides, didn't the real Ulysses fight cyclops and
minotaurs and stuff? I don't need no egghead to tell me that kicking a bunch
of monster arse will change a man's outlook. So this McCall chick is all in
Lee's face about his isolationist views (little late for that Lee) and starts
going on and on about how she's a widow and that her husband was a pilot who
died six years before while fighting in China. Lee and I had no idea what the
devil this guy was doing getting shot down in China back in the thirties, but
both of us did know that McCall should have been home taking care of her six
year
old son instead of being on a transport ship playing G.I. Jane. Little did Lee
or I know that McCall was the worldly type of broad that liked to take baths in
ancient Roman ruins during a lull in the hostilities. McCall even came with a
brassy nickname - Snapshot! I was never clear as to the origins or
significance of that nickname, but it did get to me to thinking that if these
Axis of Evil guys ever start bombing trailer parks in Missouri, I might join up
with the Delta Force or something because I'm in the market for one of those
war time nicknames. Something like Professor, Broadway, or Chick. I always
imagined coming back from a mission where some grizzled dogface says to me, "we
thought you bought it back there when that bridge blew, Chick" and I'd snort,
"you're not gettin' my rations that easy, Doc!" The idea that things happen in life to change who we are is rife with dramatic
possibilities and the natural drama of war (all that death and destruction is
really dramatic) would seem to be the ideal setting for this type of story and
may well be the subject of such classics as A Farewell To Arms and The Razor's Edge, but since DC Comics discontinued their letter columns, I don't read anymore,
so someone familiar with those works will have to let me know for sure. A script
riddled with painfully obvious moments (the poor kid from Lee's hometown dies
in front of Lee not from a battlefield wound, but from malaria and hookworm and
just so you don't miss the point, someone points out to Lee that if only
someone from his hometown had treated the malaria he wouldn't have died) as
well as the completely listless romance between Clark and Lana that
nothing ever seems to happen with (I bought Lee's
relationship with his wife Penny more than I did his affair with Snapshot),
combine to form a simplistic and dull tale
that never explored Lee's change from ass to saint with any depth. Oddly
enough, the movie is told in flashback and the framing device is the most
effective part of the movie. The way Lee talks to a reporter and the look in
his eyes at the beginning of the film when he's on his way back home from the
war really make you think you're about to see something special or at the very
least, something entertaining, instead of the cold lump of a story that is to
come. Likewise, the movie picks up again and has some believable emotion at
the end after Lee comes home and has to come to terms with his life in the war,
what happened there, and his life back home with his wife. This is all wrapped
up a bit too perfunctorily and his wife seems to be way too understanding of
things, but this is what a movie called Homecoming should be focusing on. Like the Vietnam-themed film, Coming Home, this one should have dealt with Lee's efforts to reconcile the things he felt
while at war, with the people in his life back home who didn't have any of
those experiences. The movie took baby steps in that direction at the end with
the wife talking about how the worst part was not being able to be there with
him and that all she could do was follow his progress on a map. But with the
cast
and the subject matter, the movie has to rank as a sizable disappointment due
to chiefly to the total absence of chemistry between Gable and Turner and a
script that is as shallow as the character it seeks to transform and redeem.
Gable's real-life heartache and war experiences would surely make a more
compelling yarn than this.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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