cricket30 Review of I Won't Play

I Won't Play (1944)

This demonstrates how underfed U.S. boys actually were amidst the Great Depression . . .

[8/10 · 26 March 2013]

. . . especially the character of Florida, the U.S. Marine and implicit Tarawa campaign vet who is the platoon member shown mostly shirtless, and is played by a scrawny if not skeletal actor named William "Billy" Benedict. Obviously, if the casting people for this Oscar-winning nearly 18-minute long short thought that Mr. Benedict was not representative of a significant portion of the WWII-era crop of Marines, they would not have risked the wrath of the military censors who reviewed ANY film of that day (and no doubt scrutinized war-related offerings such as this with fine-toothed combs!) by casting Billy as they did. However, I have seen MANY promos for the Marines of today as in-theater ads prior to current movies playing (most of which show hordes of troops in their dress blues standing in single file from coast to coast near all the nation's monuments and national parks) and NONE of these Marines seem to share a BMI with Mr. Benedict. I have heard many WWII draftees entered boot camp in an emaciated condition from the Great Depression. In contrast, today's military publicly states it is worried there will soon be too few people in America under the age of 40 available to meet the minimum physical requirements for even the Army or Navy, with the percentage of rotund couch potatoes among today's youth climbs toward 90!