Hail the Conquering Hero

This film was delightful and fun! It will lift your spirits - as I imagine it was meant to do in 1944. I enjoy watching films made during WWII - it helps me understand the attitudes and thoughts of the people living and fighting then. The sentiment is occasionally rather precious (for a Sturges film), but that is my quibble. I have always enjoyed watching Sturges' Sullivan's Travels. Watching "Hail the Conquering Hero" has convinced me to find and view more of Sturges' films. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

In a wonderful series of films between 1940 and 1948 Preston Sturgis rewrote the idea of film satire in Hollywood, taking apart political and business sacred cows, and showing a remarkably realistic view of sex in America despite the continued use of the so-called Hays Office and the moral code.

HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO is one of the best of these films. It deals with the issue of heroism and it's political value in wartime. Woodrow Truesmith (Eddie Bracken) is a 4-F who has been working in California in a plant because he could not get drafted. But his family and neighbors expect him to be in the army. His father was a war hero in World War I (he was named Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith after President Woodrow Wilson, General John Pershing, and the Marquis of Lafayette - supposedly Pershing's staff Major, Charles Stanton, made the statement "Lafayette we are here" when our troops arrived to help the French in 1918 - so that Woodrow was born about 1918). Bracken has lied in letters to his mother that he is a marine and a hero. He tells this to a small group of Marines, led by William Demerest (and including one named Bugsie, played by former boxer Freddie Steele) who decide to accompany him back to his home on their furlough. They go with him, and back up his lies, so that Bracken finds himself the town's leading hero - and a potential piece of political timber.

The town is run by two men, Al Briggs (the quiet but intelligent town boss) and Raymond Walburn, the richest man in town who is the mayor as well: Everett Noble. Walburn is always blustering, but he basically knows what's what. However it is Briggs who asks the right questions. When the reform party nominates Woodrow for Mayor, Briggs asks, "I wonder if he really is a hero?" And he starts making inquiries.

They have an unwitting ally: Woodrow himself. He finds the expansion of his lies too much pressure on him, and he questions it's value. But he can't buck his mother, his girlfriend (Ella Raines), nor Demerest, Steele, and the other Marines. They've learned that Woodrow is the only hope for the town's future because it's currently somewhat shoddy and corrupt in it's goals and actions. They can't let Woodrow confess.

What makes a hero? In HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO, set in the middle of WORLD WAR II, it turns out that heroism is not only found on a military front or battlefield, but can be found on the home front as well. It can take many forms, and sometimes it is at great personal humiliation and hurt. Bracken never had a better role (except for his other starring role for Sturgis in THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK), and demonstrate the growth of his moral stature quite well. Demerest, Walburn, Raines, Briggs all do well (Demerest in an oddly different role - he's a soldier, not a wise guy), and Freddy Steele's "Bugsie" is a wonderful portrait of a slightly mentally ill soldier with a mother fixation. Steele had a a career in movies in the 1940s, mostly in bit roles. This was his best performance.

Brilliant farce with more than a bitter-sweet tang about the attitudes of small town Americans towards the war and the people who served. The dialogue and pacing is first rate and Preston Sturges' stock cast are all excellent, not least Freddie Steele as the slightly dented Bugsy. His performance gives an odd edge to the film, being an awful actor and a poor comedian helps him stand out and appear as someone more real and genuine.

Sturges is Hollywood's most forgotten great director, writer and producer. Even though he shone brightly but briefly he made far superior comedies than Woody Allen's and those are pretty damn good themselves.

With literally dozens of identifiable characters, named and unnamed, this is a film in which nearly every shot is jammed full of faces -- in fact, it's nearly twenty minutes into the movie before a shot occurs in which the frame contains only a single human being (Mom taking hot buns out of the oven). Filmed and released during the darkest year of WWII, HERO is a smart, unjingoistic yet oddly patriotic comedy of the home front, and of our often short-sighted view of what makes a hero. One of Sturges' best and most innovative comedies -- and that's saying a lot!

The last of the really great comedies that Preston Sturges directed had a more serious undertone than his previous films. This is not to say that Hail the Conquering Hero isn't hilarious though. It is just as intelligent, fast-paced, subversive and witty as could be expected from the writer/director of The Lady Eve and The Palm Beach Story.

Eddie Bracken plays Woodrow Truesmith, a would-be marine who was discharged from service for chronic hay fever. Woodrow, whose father died a hero during WWI, hasn't had the heart to tell his mother about his discharge and has been pretending to still be on the front line. When he befriends a group of marines on leave, they dress him up as a hero and bring him home to make his mother happy, not anticipating that his whole town will give him a hero's welcome.

Considering that the film was made during the war, it is surprising the way it satirises the notion of the war hero as well as the attitudes of those who did not go away to fight. The awestruck townspeople are depicted as being rather gullible while the marines are shown as a tough, cohesive unit, if maybe a bit dishonest and mercenary (and in one case slightly unhinged). The film has fine production values and great performances across the board but it is Sturges' script, with its marvellous characterisations and sparkling dialogue, that really shines. If you like Preston Sturges' other, earlier comedies, this film is essential viewing.