The Tanks Are Coming

George Tobias is quite amusing here as the New York taxi driver "Malowski" who heeds President Roosevelt's stirring call to arms in 1941 and - much to the disbelief of his gal - joins up. He decides to drive his cab all the way to Fort Knox in Kentucky where he enlists and is trained on the rudiments of learning how to drive a tank. I'm not sure this is really about tanks at all, it's more of an educational training film that extols the virtues of the US Army, it's training and equipment - all with a view to tugging at some patriotic heart-strings and increasing recruitment. Some of the commentary is just a little on the over-zealous side and I'm not sure anyone would describe the military infrastructure as a "democracy" - regardless of your caste or creed! Tobias and his yellow "Betsy" try to inject a little humour and humanity into this quite brutal tree-bashing film before a rather rousing denouement that only needed a poster from Lord Kitchener. These films all had their purpose and the war may have turned out quite differently had they not achieved their goals - but the almost fervent tones of narrator Knox Manning did grate after a while. PS: Didn't Benjamin Franklin take an awful long time to write his name?!

The considerable talents of George Tobias who played many of the kinds of roles here in feature films, usually in support of the leads. He's an amiable sort of lunkhead who can't bear to be parted with his taxi cab Bessie. He's a hack driver in civilian life and sees no reason he can't take his reliable vehicle into the army with him. So he drives her from New York all the way to Fort Knox, Kentucky where he reports and learns all about the driving, care, and maintenance of a tank.

Through all the propaganda and the attempts at wartime humor which don't really hold up well today, we learn a lot about tanks and their use in wartime. This was in fact the great advance in weaponry from World War I and the Nazis learned the lessons better than the Allied powers did.

Gig Young, Richard Travis, and John Litel are also in the short which did get nominated for Best Short Subject in 1941. Today The Tanks Are Coming is a a slightly amusing bit of history.

THE TANKS ARE COMING is a Warner Brothers (WB) short dedicated to military preparedness which in 1941 with the first peace time draft in effect and WWII raging was a major motivator. WB put a lot more into this short then usual. First it was filmed in the expensive Three (3) Strip TechniColor process. Second featured the WB stock company and third had the full cooperation of the U.S. Army and its Armor Training School at Fort Knox Kentucky.

Story in brief is that of recruits being indoctrinated in the then new theories of armored mobile warfare. Learning how to maintain and use their new equipment in a effective manner. Watching it no doubt gave theater goers the feeling that we were in good hands and prepared for the conflict ahead. Unfortunately our future enemies watching this no doubt felt we would be better off sticking to making refrigerators then playing with the big boys.

That is the best lesson in watching this now is how UNPREPARED we (U.S.A.) were at this new warfare and for WWII in general. The equipment that had to be depended upon just was not very good and would certainly not deter our future enemies Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. Nor bring confidence to our future allies. We were fortunate to see this on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Its one (1) of those things that you have to be lucky to catch, but if it was not for TCM would never be seen at all.

...Actually, that is very short footage of an earlier short "Declaration of Independence" in which Litel is Thomas Jefferson, NOT John Hancock, but it is hard to tell from the intro. This was made before the US entered WWII, but after everybody knew we were going to have to get in, it was just a matter of time. So little shorts like these were made to encourage men to enlist, to encourage patriotism, etc., so that when the war did come the army would not be swarming with newbies. It's actually pretty interesting from a historical perspective as to how tank training was done in 1941.

However, the comical turn the film takes is just a little corny now, and probably insulting if you are a cabbie from New York City. George Tobias plays a cabbie from NYC who comes to Fort Knox to join the army and drive tanks. He speaks in an exaggerated Queens accent as though he is an escapee from a Bowery Boys movie, and he thinks he can...drive the taxi up to the front door and leave it on the base? When he is told to ditch the car by a commanding officer, he leaves his taxi to a terrible and unintentional fate. Honestly, if this were the caliber of recruits in 1941 the US could forget winning any kind of war, much less a two front one!

Worth it for the history of it all.

When World War II started in September, 1939, the United States stayed out of the fray. The vast majority of Americans wanted the country to stay neutral....and despite the seriousness of the war, the US government did little to prepare for war. Jump ahead two years and some things have changed for the US. The war seemed imminent and the American public, for the first time, was behind our getting involved. The problem was that the American armed forces were woefully inadequate....a tiny fraction of how big and well equipped the military needed to be. So, Hollywood and the government worked together--and began making films that glamorized life in the armed services. Among these film were mostly comedies, such as "Buck Privates", "Caught in the Draft" and "Tanks a Million"...all from 1941. Here with "The Tanks Are Coming" they made a comedy/documentary hybrid...also from 1941.

The film features the US Army's tank corps and follows men through classes at Fort Knox, Kentucky. And, the film stars George Tobias as a recruit from Brooklyn who is comic relief. Most of what you see is modern color footage of the best tanks America had, the awful and outclassed M3 light tank. While it's all very patriotic and makes it sound like America is ready for war, the opposite was actually true and the tanks mostly junk compared to the German tanks of the same era.

Overall, it's educational and probably did its best to help the war effort. Mildly enjoyable.

By the way, the poster IMDB shows for this film is wrong...it is from the 1951 film of the same name but the movies are both very different and have nothing to do with each other other than the names.