G.I. Joe: The Ernie Pyle Story

This 70 minute documentary is padded with 10 minutes worth of slow moving credits. The entire show has random music playing in the background. William Windom reads Ernie Pyle columns while Harry Carey Jr. Narrates. Neither seems right for their role. Perhaps they should have swapped.

The story of Ernie Pyle is a great story, and most of it comes through in this documentary. Their are brief but excellent quotes from Walter Cronkite and Andy Rooney who were in Europe covering the war too. Andy seems to have known Ernie pretty well. I wish they had let both talk more.

We also have quotes from Charles Kuralt and the author of a book on Ernie. Kuralt seems especially appropriate since essentially Ernie wrote a newspaper version of Kuralt's "On the Road" stories before the war. They both tell stories of the little guy, the farmer, a mother with a sick child etc.

If you're not familiar with Ernie Pyle, he differed from other reporters in that he marched with the soldiers, slept on the ground with them, ate their chow and grew filthy with them slogging through the mud. He told their story, the story of the soldier on the battlefield, first person. His columns must have felt like letters home from the front. His writing is simple but incredibly effective. His fellow correspondents recognized this at the time and many said they wished they could write like that.

Too bad this documentary feels so slapped together.