FIRST TO FIGHT (1967)

Useful in showing just how cluelessly out-of-touch major studios had become by the 1960s (especially on mid-list releases), not good for much else.  This formulaic WWII tale (very loosely fact-based) was made for an audience that no longer existed.  It follows a Guadalcanal survivor, now a Medal of Honor Marine, sent home after battle on a bond-selling/morale-boosting tour across American where he finds love & marriage before returning on active duty to discover he’s lost his nerve.  Chad Everett, one of the last old-school studio contract players, blows any shot at movie stardom (he’d settle comfortably into series tv*) proving charmless in love & war as he aggressively courts chilly tour organizer Marilyn Devin, a ‘Tippi’ Hedren type who’s sex-wary after losing her husband at Pearl Harbor.  Directed with zero flair by Howard Hawks protégé Christian Nyby, this Warner Bros. release apes the bright, cheap-looking ‘60s Universal house style (underdressed interior sets, flat lighting, soundstage exteriors that look like Revell scale-models).  The film briefly livens up when sixth-billed Gene Hackman comes on in the third act to witness Everett’s battlefield collapse.  Lots of noisy ordinance exploded, but you can still hear old Hollywood dying not with a bang, but with a whimper.*

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Chad Everett hit big on tv with MEDICAL CENTER, but he’s mostly remembered for a testy appearance on the Dick Cavett Show, guest #2 after Lily Tomlin.  Women’s Rights in the air at the time (1972) and Everett, talking about all the animals he owns on his farm, includes the wife.  Yikes!  She’s the most important one he owns!  Ha ha.  Tomlin jumps up; walks out; big media the next day.  (See many clips on youtube.)  Few remember there’s even worse to come.  Post Tomlin, the show goes on with guest #3: World Famous poet, Mr. Age of Anxiety W.H. Auden, who hasn’t the slightest idea who any of these people are.  Or that Everett has just read a poem about his wife he had in a magazine.  Instead, Auden goes into benign entertainment mode, delighting all with a few of the short ditties he wrote for fun. ‘John Milton; Never stayed at a Hilton; Hotel; Which is just as well.’  At which point, Everett leans in to mention his literary output, saying  ‘We poets’ as he gestures toward Auden.  This is why people miss the ‘Seventies.  

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *That ‘whimper’ would include the film’s soundtrack, loaded with replays of ‘As Time Goes By’ from CASABLANCA/’42, seen in an extended clip in the wrong frame ratio.