- - - -

"Ah, dreams are getting better all the time. I was back home in Baltimore loading up on hard-shell crabs and beer."

-  Layton

"That dream's against regulations, soldier. You KNOW what our boys overseas always dream about."

- Holley

"Mom's BLUE-berry pie."

-  Layton

"Why certainly. That's what we're fighting for. Why, when I get home, just give me a hotdog and slice of that pie. Am I gonna kick if I don't get my job back? No sir-ee..."

-  Holley

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Screenwriter Robert Pirosh broke into the film industry writing comedies for The Marx Brother's (A Day at the Races) and Veronica Lake (I Married a Witch). When World War II broke out, Pirosh enlisted and wound up in 35th Infantry division. He rose to the rank of Master Sergeant and saw action in the Ardennes area during The Battle of the Bulge (and click on over for a brief history lesson.) Pirosh was part of a patrol that made its way into Bastogne, Belgium, to help relieve the 101st Airborne and others who were under siege there. 

After the war ended, he returned to his former profession. It appears that the rest of his filmmaking career was dedicated to truthfully portraying the common infantry soldier with no Hollywood phony-baloney. His time in the service greatly affected and influenced him and it would translate to his screenplays.  One of which, Battleground, was based on his experiences fighting in and around Bastogne.

Producer Dore Schary was best known for a string of Cary Grant comedies including Mr. Blandings Builds his Dreamhouse and The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer. Pirosh worked with Schary at RKO pictures, which was run by Howard Hughes at the time. Schary fell in love with Pirosh's script and began developing it for production. Not wanting anyone to copy their film, they hid the production under the false title Prelude to Love. Hughes was convinced, though, since the war was over, that there was no market for this type of movie anymore. Schary fought for it but lost and the production was cancelled.

When Schary left RKO for MGM, he took the Battleground script with him. He couldn't convince Hughes and he had a hell of a time convincing Louis B. Mayer who begrudgingly caved in and green-lighted the project. Mayer, and everyone else in the industry, thought Schary was crazy so while it was in production, Battleground became known as Schary's Folly.

The production picked up some steam when William Wellman came on as director. 'Wild Bill" Wellman, a veteran himself of the first World War, was a Hollywood maverick. He was demanding but well respected craftsmen. Actors wanted to work with him but were wary of his temper. His film Wings won the very first Academy Award for Best Picture. Known for his own stark and brooding style, in films like The Oxbow Incident and The Public Enemy, he could also handle action and adventure with the likes of his version of Beau Geste starring Gary Cooper.

Wellman had already made one great war film, The Story of GI Joe, based on the novel Brave Men by correspondent Ernie Pyle. GI Joe was a different kind of war film. The focus was starting to shift from the abstractions of why we fight to the realism of who was fighting and the effects combat had on them. Wellman's camera got right in the middle of the action; the fight scenes were intense, with no time for patriotic speeches, and the audience found themselves ducking the bullets, shells and grenades, too.

The cast for the new film was assembled, mostly MGM contract players, including Johnson, Montalban and Thompson. Wellman sent his actors to boot camp for some basic training. After that they brought in 20 paratroopers who served in Bastogne as technical advisors and they appear as extras in the film.

Filming began. As the rushes came in, the studio saw what they were getting and the talk of Schary's Folly quickly died out. To top it off, Wellman brought the production in twenty days early and under budget by almost $100000. 

Before the film was released to the public, a private screening was arranged for President Truman and he made it official: They had a hit on their hands. 

Battleground did hit and it hit big at the box office. Critics loved it, audiences loved it, and, probably most important of all, veterans of the war liked and appreciated it, giving it the ultimate seal of approval. 

The film would be nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, Screenwriter, Cinematography and Supporting Actor for Whitmore. It went on to win two awards, Pirosh for his screenplay and Paul Vogel for his work behind the camera. It lost out to All the King's Men, the tale of a fictionalized crooked southern politician (but it didn't take a genius to see they were talking about The Kingfish, Huey Long) for best picture. It wasn't a big a crime as Saving Private Ryan losing to Satanmax's Shakespeare in Love but, damn it, they were robbed, too.

Like Wellman's GI Joe, Battleground was a new and different kind of war film. Sure, it was hampered by the censors of the day so it couldn't get too vulgar or violent. Sure it gets hung up a bit when stock footage is spliced in. And then there is that idiotic romantic subplot with Darcel *sigh*. Yet people tend to get hung up on these points and write it off as another typical war flick of that period.

But Battleground is anything but typical. Before it, war films were either propaganda pieces for why we're fighting (The Purple Heart), Hollywoodized history lessons (Guadalcanal Diary), tributes to service branches (The Fighting Seabees) or straight out fantasy yarns to boost morale (Sahara). (And I'll pause here, for the record, to say that doesn't make those mentioned or others like them bad films.)

War films always seem to have the same cast of players but Battleground had no good old boy from Texas. No Brooklynite wondering how 'dem Bums were making out. No farmers. No hot-blooded Italian lovers. No expectant fathers. No Privates with axes to grind or past history with their Sergeants as we wait, patiently, for the golly, you were right, and I was wrong speech - now let's go get those Krauts or Japs. 

In Battleground we have an older paratrooper that everyone calls Pop. A Latino from Los Angeles. An idealistic news man who bought in to why we should be fighting but is now having second thoughts. A drawling country bumpkin from Appalachia, the new guy, the malcontent, the gold brick and the paranoid one - who thinks every bullet has his name on it. Sound familiar? Sure, but here, though, they are characters not caricatures and believe me, there's a big difference.

The cast of characters is big but it's nothing you can't keep track of if you're paying attention. What amazes me is that the majority of these characters aren't very likeable. Most of them are devious, cowardly and rude. Kipp is a turd, Jarvess is stuck-up and Bettis is very, very preoccupied with getting himself wounded to get off the line. Why these guys aren't fighting each other and not the enemy is a testament to military training.

The film was blessed with a great ensemble cast. The stars of the film were Johnson, Hodiak and Montalban but they balance out equally with Fowley's false teeth, Courtland's yodeling and big feet, Anderson's coveted watch and Murphy's arthritis much to the film's benefit. But if anybody steals the show it is Whitmore. His portrayal of Sgt. Kinnie appears to be a Bill Mauldin cartoon that crawled right of the pages of Stars and Stripes and come to life. (He's Willy and Joe.) He only has about twenty lines in the whole picture but when the fog finally lifts, and he can hardly contain himself on his frozen feet, one ponders how he ever lost the Oscar to Dean Jaegger (who won for another war film 12 O'clock High.)

Another big complaint people have about this film is Van Johnson's portrayal of Holley. A comedic song and dance man by trade, people tire of his mugging for the camera or his mincing over his stolen eggs.

Just hold the damn phone right there.

Folks, without that stuff, the scene where his character freezes under fire and runs away, until Layton unwittingly stops him, wouldn't have near the impact that it has. The happy-go-lucky squad clown has reached his breaking point. He runs, and might have kept on running if Layton hadn't stopped him, but Holley recovers and leads the counter-attack. To me, this is the turning point of the film, not the fog lifting and the air-drop. Holley, and the rest of the squad, bent - but did not break, and the outcome of the Battle for Bastogne (in the movie anyways) was never in doubt after that.

Wellman and Pirosh were sticklers for an accurate portrayal of life in the "foot-slogging infantry." The hurrying up and waiting. The digging in and then instantly moving again. The constant complaining about the brass (superior officers). The lack of information as you head down in rank as to where you are and where you're going. Except for Sgt. Kinnie and the Platoon Lieutenant, officers are amazingly absent from the film. I also believe this is the first film where men of rank, when going into combat, hastily remove all forms of insignia from their uniforms as not to draw German fire.

When the men poke fun at Holley after he takes over the squad and starts giving orders, he quips back "Yup, strictly chicken, that's me." Every veteran knew that what he really meant to say, but couldn't, was "Yup, strictly chicken-shit, that's me." Chicken-shit is what the GI generally used in reference to Army rules and regs on privileges of rank, appearance, conduct and almost everything else. 

The replacements were given the cold shoulder, not necessarily because they hadn't proven themselves yet, because the veterans hesitated to make new friends when in all likelihood they might be dead by the next day.

Pirosh made his fictitious squad part of the 327th Glider Regiment, you can tell by the Club symbol on their helmets, and they were the ones who met the German envoy asking for Gen. McAuliffe's famous surrender. Now I won't say Battleground is completely and historically accurate, most of the German/American infiltrators weren't around Bastogne but further north, beyond that, aside from a few other dramatic liberties, it commits no great sin against history.

The action sequences were staged as authentically as possible from the weapons to the tactics used. The special-effects and pyrotechnics were spot on right down to the pitch and whine of the mortars to the phlegmatic gurgle of incoming German 88mm shells. Most of the action takes place on soundstages but to the film's credit, it's never a distraction.

Battleground was also one of the first films to look at the horror and stress of combat physically and psychologically on an individual level. The film is subtle with this, most overtly in the scene when Holley and Layton talk about why they're fighting for Mom's blueberry pie, but it rings true loud and clear. When Jarvess reads from the Stars and Stripes about "the heroic stand" they're making, Holley tells him to "skip the commercial." Even the Chaplains Christmas speech is interrupted by a German bombardment. These men weren't fighting for the cause. They were fighting to stay alive until they could finally go home. To accomplish this means fighting and subduing the enemy so that's what they do. 

The transformation of these characters from the clean cut, snap-to drilling sequence at the beginning of the film - to the frozen, battle weary, starving, dirty and exhausted shells of their former selves at the end is shocking and startling. 

With the battle finally over, as they line up to march out, we finally notice how much smaller the platoon is. Over half the men are gone. They start to shuffle off, haphazardly, but Kinnie snaps them back together. They form up in cadence, despite all they've been through and endured, and march off into the sunset, tall and proud, and I tell ya, it brings a tear to my eye and a rush of endorphins down my spine every time I see it.

All this stuff is old hat for war films now but you have to remember that Battleground did it first. Okay, The Story of GI Joe may have started the change but Battleground broke the mold and the war film hasn't been the same since. Schary's Folly basically was the beginning of the end for Louis B. Mayer and sounded the death knell for the old studio system. Pirosh continued making war films like Go For Broke, the story of the all Nisei (Japanese-American) 442nd Regimental Combat Team. He also started Hell is for Heroes but a conflict arose with star Steve McQueen, so he left the production. He then teamed up with Lemur Productions and brought the war to us weekly with Combat! on the small screen.

Unfortunately, for some reason, Battleground hasn't sustained it's massive popularity from '49. Critics tend to champion Wellman's The Story of GI Joe more, and say it is a better film, but I disagree completely. In fact, I will go one step further and say that I think Battleground, for the reasons I've stated here, is the greatest war film ever made. Period. How much do I like it? It's engraved in bedrock right below The Thing From Another World as my second favorite movie of all time. 

I do love this movie; the characters, the story, the action and it's beautiful craftsmanship. And hopefully, now that I'm finally done yapping about it (sorry I tend to get a little long winded when talking about films I truly care about), you'll take a look at Battleground for yourself.

Back to Battleground Part One.

Bonus Feature:

A Brief History Lesson on The Battle of the Bulge