I just saw "To the Shores of Tripoli" recently and was very disappointed. I expected a blood and guts war movie, but what I got was essentially a U.S. Marine recruitment film.
Set just prior to the U.S. entry into WWII, it tells the story of womanizing playboy Chris Waters (John Payne) who is sent by his father to enlist in the marines. He reports to his father's old sergeant Dixie Walker (Randolph Scott) with instructions "to make him into a man". The wise old sergeant see some potential in his charge but the two clash repeatedly. Into the mix comes Nurse Mary Carter (Maureen O'Hara) whom Carter tries to woo. That's it.
20th Century Fox under Producer Darryl F. Zanuck seems to have lavished a large budget complete with technicolor on this picture. Color films of the time were rare and were usually reserved for big budget musicals. The so-called marine training we see is restricted to close order drills with little action to boot. There's a brief fight between Payne and Scott and a sequence involving navy target shooting. The rest of it concentrates on the interplay between the three stars and little else.
The best thing about this movie is a chance to catch the timeless beauty of Maureen O'Hara. Yet to acquire her trademark flaming red hair, she is nonetheless breathtaking in glorious technicolor.
Payne and Scott are totally miscast. Payne is not very convincing as a rich kid playboy and Scott, who was more at home in the saddle, simply is not my vision of a sadistic drill sergeant. He did do better though, in 1943's "Gung Ho".
There are some other recognizable faces in the cast. Elena Verdugo has a nice bit as a Spanish dancer. Very young Harry Morgan and Alan Hale Jr. play members of Payne's unit, Stanley Andrews plays a doctor, Hugh Beaumont an orderly, Frank Coglan Jr. a bell boy, Gordon Jones an MP and Walter Sande a pharmacist.
I don't know this for a fact, but it looks like the film was conceived and made prior to Pearl Harbor and that the "boys go to war ending" was tacked on after the fact.
Should have been better.
Set just prior to the U.S. entry into WWII, it tells the story of womanizing playboy Chris Waters (John Payne) who is sent by his father to enlist in the marines. He reports to his father's old sergeant Dixie Walker (Randolph Scott) with instructions "to make him into a man". The wise old sergeant see some potential in his charge but the two clash repeatedly. Into the mix comes Nurse Mary Carter (Maureen O'Hara) whom Carter tries to woo. That's it.
20th Century Fox under Producer Darryl F. Zanuck seems to have lavished a large budget complete with technicolor on this picture. Color films of the time were rare and were usually reserved for big budget musicals. The so-called marine training we see is restricted to close order drills with little action to boot. There's a brief fight between Payne and Scott and a sequence involving navy target shooting. The rest of it concentrates on the interplay between the three stars and little else.
The best thing about this movie is a chance to catch the timeless beauty of Maureen O'Hara. Yet to acquire her trademark flaming red hair, she is nonetheless breathtaking in glorious technicolor.
Payne and Scott are totally miscast. Payne is not very convincing as a rich kid playboy and Scott, who was more at home in the saddle, simply is not my vision of a sadistic drill sergeant. He did do better though, in 1943's "Gung Ho".
There are some other recognizable faces in the cast. Elena Verdugo has a nice bit as a Spanish dancer. Very young Harry Morgan and Alan Hale Jr. play members of Payne's unit, Stanley Andrews plays a doctor, Hugh Beaumont an orderly, Frank Coglan Jr. a bell boy, Gordon Jones an MP and Walter Sande a pharmacist.
I don't know this for a fact, but it looks like the film was conceived and made prior to Pearl Harbor and that the "boys go to war ending" was tacked on after the fact.
Should have been better.