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A major work in the career of John Ford, They Were Expendable reflects the great director's love of the U.S. Navy and admiration of the men and women who fought the Second World War. It's a product of wartime, meant to be stirringly patriotic and occasionally saccharine. It almost qualifies as a U.S. Navy product: Star Robert Montgomery was a PT boat captain and Ford and screenwriter Frank "Spig" Wead were high-ranking Navy men. Yet They Were Expendable is nevertheless an admirably restrained and somber work, especially compared to other jingoistic films of the period. As befits it's subject, the Navy's post-Pearl Harbor losses, Ford's deep-focus camerawork is an often gorgeous collection of grays and blacks. Ford had just finished an Oscar-winning documentary, Battle of Midway, when he started this movie, and it shows. Wead's script is an appealingly nuts-and-bolts look at Navy men that mostly avoids obligatory flag-waving; even the subplot romance between John Wayne's Lt. "Rusty" Ryan and Donna Reed's Lt. Sandy Davyss is un-melodramatic. Ford uses realistic Florida locations and sprinkles documentary-like close-ups throughout the film. The close-ups get somewhat precious by film's end, but they're effective. Ford blessedly leaves out his banana-peel humor, and in Montgomery has an actor who centers the movie with an interestingly lean and modulated performance despite having no backstory and almost no emotional outpourings - he scarcely raises his voice. They Were Expendable offers glimmers of the psychological complexity that marks later Ford films like The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It's a classic that hasn't received it's proper recognition.
Starring: Robert Montgomery, John Wayne, Donna Reed, Ward Bond, Cameron Mitchell, Billy Wilkerson, Charles Calhoun, Charlie Murray Jr., Danny Borzage, Dutch Schlickenmeyer, Eleanore Vogel, Ernest Sefton, Fred Coby, Hansel Warner, Harold Kruger, Jack Carrington, Jack Mower, James Farley, James Magill, John Epper, John Trent, Jon Gilbreath, Karl Miller, Larry Dods, Leonard Mellin, Leonard Stanford, Max Ong, Nino Pipitone, Pacita Tod-Tod, Philip Ahn, Robert E. Homans, Robert H. Barrat, Robert Thom, Roque Ybarra, Roy Thomas, Trina Lowe, Wallace Ford, William Lundigan, William McKeever Riley, Jack Holt, Marshall Thompson, Paul Langton, Leon Ames, Arthur Walsh, Donald Curtis, Jeff York, Murray Alper, Harry Tenbrook, Jack Pennick, Alex Havier, Charles Trowbridge, Robert Barrat, Bruce Kellogg, Tim Murdock, Louis Jean Heydt, Russell Simpson, Vernon Steele, Pedro de Cordoba, Sammy Stein, Art Foster, Frank McGrath, Jack Stoney, Duke Green, Stubby Kruger, Phil Schumacher, Frank Pershing, Joey Ray, Dan Borzage, Blake Edwards, Michael Kirby, Stephen Barclay, Franklin Parker, Robert E. O'Connor, Leslie Sketchley, Robert Homans, William B. Davidson, Jack Cheatham, Forbes Murray, Emmett Vogan, Sherry Hall, Al Bridge, Jack Luden, Eve March, George Bruggeman, Reginald Simpson, James Carlisle, Tony Carson, Frank Donahue, Dan Quigg, Dick Earle, Jack Lee, Wedgewood Nowell, Jack Shea, John Roy, Michael Kostrick, George Magrill, Paul Kruger, Bruce Carruthers, Bob Thom, Larry Steers, Eleanor Vogel, Jane Crowley, Leota Lorraine, Almeda Fowler, Betty Blythe, Charles Murray Jr., George Economides, Michael Economides, William Neff, Jim Farley, Henry Mirelez, Lee Tung Foo, Tom Tyler, Bill Wilkerson, John Carlyle, Mary Jane French, Roger Cole, Kermit Maynard, Frank Eldredge, Jack Trent, Robert Strong, William McCormick, Bill Nind, Don Lewis
Director: Cliff Reid, John Ford