According to TCM's Robert Osborne, this was the last film Henry Fonda worked on before enlisting in the U.S. Navy during World War II.
On August 24, 1942, the day after finishing his work on The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), Henry Fonda drove to a Los Angeles military induction center and enlisted in the navy. He did not tell his employer, 20th Century-Fox, what he was doing. He had decided that despite his age (37), he just couldn't sit out the war, and he hoped to enlist quietly. But word leaked to the press.
The next day he was sent to boot camp in San Diego --- where he was immediately detained by the Shore Patrol and returned to Hollywood! Fox studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck had used his influence to get Fonda a deferment so that he could cast him in a new movie, Immortal Sergeant (1943), which Zanuck claimed would help the war effort. Fonda later recalled bitterly: "So there I was back in Imperial Valley, California, in the hottest part of the desert, making a film called Immortal Sergeant. It was a silly picture. You want to hear the plot? I won World War II single-handed!"
This treatment by Zanuck left a bad taste in Fonda's mouth for the film, for Zanuck, and for 20th Century-Fox. For the rest of his life, Fonda routinely cited Immortal Sergeant as his least favorite movie. But judged on its own terms decades later, that appraisal seems overly harsh. Immortal Sergeant is hardly the greatest WWII movie, but it's not bad at all.
The next day he was sent to boot camp in San Diego --- where he was immediately detained by the Shore Patrol and returned to Hollywood! Fox studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck had used his influence to get Fonda a deferment so that he could cast him in a new movie, Immortal Sergeant (1943), which Zanuck claimed would help the war effort. Fonda later recalled bitterly: "So there I was back in Imperial Valley, California, in the hottest part of the desert, making a film called Immortal Sergeant. It was a silly picture. You want to hear the plot? I won World War II single-handed!"
This treatment by Zanuck left a bad taste in Fonda's mouth for the film, for Zanuck, and for 20th Century-Fox. For the rest of his life, Fonda routinely cited Immortal Sergeant as his least favorite movie. But judged on its own terms decades later, that appraisal seems overly harsh. Immortal Sergeant is hardly the greatest WWII movie, but it's not bad at all.
The majority of the desert sequences were filmed on location near El Centro and Brawley, in the Mojave Desert, CA: and "Spence" and "Valentine's" swimming scenes were shot at Malibu Lake, CA.
Maureen O'Hara later remembered Henry Fonda preparing for his war duties while on location: "I can still see Hank with his nose buried in books between takes, studying for his service entrance exams. The studio publicized our love scene as Hank's last screen kiss before going to war."
The day after Henry Fonda finished with Immortal Sergeant (1943), he returned to duty in the navy. He went on to work in naval intelligence, saw action in the Pacific, and was awarded a Presidential citation and the Bronze Star. Fonda's first film after the war was the Twentieth Century-Fox production My Darling Clementine (1946).