Stand by for Action [Cargo of Innocents] ** (1942, Robert Taylor, Charles Laughton, Brian Donlevy, Walter Brennan, Marilyn Maxwell, Henry O’Neill) – Classic Movie Review 13,143

Cinema release poster.

MGM 1942 black-and-white US Navy war film Stand by for Action [Cargo of Innocents] stars Robert Taylor, Brian Donlevy, Charles Laughton, Walter Brennan, and Marilyn Maxwell in her film debut.

‘The mightiest naval drama of all time!’

The old tale about conflict aboardships, sinking a Japanese vessel and rescuing a shipful of women and children is given a dusting-off in director Robert Z Leonard’s 1942 MGM American black-and-white US Navy war film Stand by for Action [Cargo of Innocents]. It stars Robert Taylor, Brian Donlevy, Charles Laughton, Walter Brennan, and Marilyn Maxwell in her film debut.

Robert Taylor gives a stiff, dull star performance as stuffy Harvard-taught officer Lieutenant Gregg Masterman, patrolling the Atlantic in a destroyer, Brian Donlevy is unexcitingly solid as dedicated ship’s captain Lieutenant Commander Martin J Roberts, while Charles Laughton is neglected by the script, and finds little to distract himself as the Rear Admiral Stephen Thomas.

Despite a good pedigree and the fine cast, it ends up thoroughly routine flag-waving war adventure stuff, unpersuasive and stereotypical, though the action, when it comes, is okay. There is a lot of professionalism in the production, but conversely there is a lack of conviction and reality in the screenplay and MGM’s cast of typecast actors is largely coasting.

It was nominated for Best Special Effects Oscar (A Arnold Gillespie, Donald Jahraus, Michael Steinore).

One wonders what the right-wing Robert Taylor and Walter Brennan thought of the alternative Charles Laughton.

Laughton said his performance was like something out of H.M.S. Pinafore, the comic opera by Arthur Sullivan and W. S. Gilbert.

Marilyn Maxwell from the trailer for Stand by for Action (1942).

Marilyn Maxwell makes her film debut here, starting a career that ran to 1970. She was a busy lady. In 1945, Frank Sinatra admitted his affair with Maxwell to his wife Nancy. Then from 1950 to 1954, Maxwell had an affair with Bob Hope who was married to singer Dolores Reade. In 1960, Rock Hudson’s agent Henry Willson arranged for Maxwell to become one of the women Hudson publicly dated to combat rumours of the actor’s homosexuality.

British title: Cargo of Innocents.

The screenplay obviously had a lot of different hands at work on it: it is by George Bruce, John L Balderston, and Herman J Mankiewicz, based on an original story by Captain Harvey Haislip and R C Sherriff, suggested by a story by Laurence Kirk.

The cast are Robert Taylor as Lieutenant Gregg Masterman, Charles Laughton as Rear Admiral Stephen Thomas, Brian Donlevy as Lieutenant Commander Martin J Roberts, Walter Brennan as Chief Yeoman Henry Johnson, Marilyn Maxwell as Audrey Carr, Henry O’Neill as Commander Stone MC, Marta Linden as Mary Collins, Chill Wills as Chief Boatswain’s Mate Jenks, Douglass Dumbrille as Captain Ludlow, Richard Quine, William Tannen, Douglas Fowley, Tim Ryan, Dick Simmons, Byron Foulger, Hobart Cavanaugh, Inez Cooper, Ben Welden, and Harry Fleischman.

It was a hit, costing $1.4 million, earning $3.2 million, and making MGM a profit of $786,000.

Robert Taylor (born Spangler Arlington Brugh; August 5, 1911 – June 8, 1969)

Robert Taylor continued to make movies during World War Two, though after playing a tough US sergeant in Bataan (1943), he became a flying instructor in the US Naval Air Corps.

He helped to found the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals in February 1944, an  organization of high-profile, politically conservative members of the Hollywood film industry. Its stated purpose was to defend the film industry, and the US as a whole, against what its founders claimed was communist and fascist infiltration. Taylor’s friends John Wayne, Walt Disney and Gary Cooper were also prominent members.

And in October 1947, Taylor was called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities  regarding Communism in Hollywood. He named two people, Karen Morley and Howard Da Silva, as troublemakers at the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) meetings. He said: ‘At meetings, there was always a certain group of actors and actresses whose every action would indicate to me that, if they are not Communists, they are working awfully hard to be Communists.’

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,143

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com