The Story of GI Joe **** (1945, Burgess Meredith, Robert Mitchum, Freddie Steele) – Classic Movie Review 3253

Burgess Meredith lands a great role as real-life American newsman Ernie Pyle, Scripps-Howard War Correspondent, in this riveting autobiographical war picture based on Pyle’s wartime memoirs Brave Men and Here Is Your War.

Director William A Wellman’s 1945 movie is a realistic World War Two story and study of ordinary men at war, as seen by the Pulitzer prize-winning newsman, who follows the American C Company, 18th Infantry from North Africa to Italy. It was nominated for four Oscars, Best Supporting Actor, Best Screenplay, Best Original Song (‘Linda’) and Best Music.

Meredith shows what a great actor he could be when he was given the chance and Robert Mitchum won his only Oscar nomination ever, when was nominated as Best Supporting Actor in his first major role as the company’s battle-scarred lieutenant, Bill Walker.

Despite some set-bound studio filming at the Selznick International Studios in Culver City, California, the gritty filming by director Wellman, himself a World War One veteran, gets under the skin of the harsh facts of war in a stark and useful antidote to the normal run of flag-waving Hollywood war movies made around this era.

Also in the cast are Freddie Steele as Sergeant Warnicki, Wally Cassell as Private Dondaro, Jimmy Lloyd, as Private Spencer John R Reilly as Private Murphy, William Murphy as Private Mew, as well as Don Whitehead, George Lait, Chris Cunningham, Hal Boyle, Bob Landry, Lucien Hubbard, Clete Roberts, Robert Reuben, William Benedict, Michael Browne, Yolanda Lacca, Tito Renaldo, Dick Rich, William Self and Dorothy Coonan Wellman.

Sicily and Italy Combat Veterans of the Campaigns in Africa appear as themselves. These extras are American GIs then being transferred from the war in Europe to the Pacific. Many of them were killed in the fighting on Okinawa – the same battle in which Ernie Pyle was killed by a Japanese machine gunner -and never saw the movie.

There are no end credits.

The Iverson Movie Ranch, Chatsworth, California, was used for the sequence of marching through countryside before the baptism of fire.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 3253

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