There are enough films on the formative events in the lives of future U.S. Presidents to constitute a niche bio-pic genre. (Lincoln & FDR leading the lists.) The few where POTUS was still around to buy a ticket constitute a sub-niche. But only one came out (June 1963) with its subject still in office: this one. Oddly, Jack Warner assigned Bryan Foy, his old ‘King of the B’s’ to produce. (He was fresh off HOUSE OF WOMEN/’62, a Females in Prison programmer, giving Foy the biggest budget (4 mill.) he’d ever had. Script and directing troubles galore (Raoul Walsh considered; Lewis Milestone canned after objecting to the early comic shtick (how right he was!); finally going with tv director Leslie H. Martinson. Fortunately, Foy had two things going for him: a largely true Greatest Generation WWII story of Kennedy heroics after his little PT boat is plowed by a bigger Japanese ship at night, and his calm stubborn acts to get survivors to safety; and the film’s real ace in the whole, cinematographer Robert Surtees who puts out one stunning location shot after another (Florida Keys subbing for the Solomon Islands), along with top notch second-unit action & ordinance stuff. (Other than that unconvincing island interior soundstage set.) So, blame Foy for that formulaic first half (fixing up the ship with colorful characters) and for the bombastic/patriotic score, but credit Cliff Robertson for not forcing a Kennedy accent (Vaughn Meader’s comedy album, ‘The First Family’ likely held him back), holding the impression down to a Kennedyesque ‘toothiness.’ And perhaps director Martinson for casting a host of fresh tv faces (like Robert Culp), fortunately, none of them from that new tv hit, McHale’s Navy.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Obama and Trump were around to buy tickets. Though just about no one bought tickets to the Trump pic. PT 109 had a big fund-raising premiere in Boston/June 1963, and was ‘respectfully’ re-released three months after the November assassination. See poster below.
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