DESTROYER (1943)

While screenwriters routinely raid their real life experiences for material, full-fledged bio-pics on them are few and far between.  Ignoring those famous for more than writing, there’s MANK/’20, on Herman Mankiewicz; GAILY, GAILY/’69, about the Chicago newspaper days of young Ben Hecht; and John Ford’s very uneven, but fascinating THE WINGS OF EAGLES/’57, on frequent collaborator and this film's writer Frank ‘Spig’ Wead, a career Navy man paralyzed in a freak accident.  Wead, who usefully fed into Ford’s strengths and weaknesses, really had but one story in his quiver when not adapting something, the mid-ranked military braggart/fuck-up (on air or sea) who comes thru in the end, sacrificing himself one way or another to save the crewmen he’d alienated all thru the pic.  In this standard-issue WWII uplifter, short/tubby Edward G. Robinson’s the old salt/former Navy man who helped build the new Destroyer-class John Paul Jones and finagles his way back onboard at his old rank only to find he’s totally out of step culturally with today’s Navy and technically incompetent.  The idea that Captain Regis Toomey would agree to take him back hard to swallow, especially after a ‘shake-down’ trial run goes haywire.  Later, a Navy doc refuses to clear him for duty even at a reduced rank.  But since Wead’s signature plot requires Eddie G. to save the day in the third act, he simply ignores the order and gets back onboard.  Really?  Still, fun to see Glenn Ford in his salad days, rivals with Robinson but giving him a second chance because he’s fallen for the old guy’s daughter, little remembered Marguerite Chapman.  (Chapman a Roz Russell backup type at Columbia.)  Some clever F/X during an aerial attack helps take us thru the drek (one plane blows to pieces flying straight at us), but this version of the Wead formula sees journeyman director William A. Seiter working by-the-numbers, and classy lenser Franz Planer with little to do.  How good can you make Robinson look?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Wead’s best scripts were in the ‘30s: see Ford’s AIR MAIL/’32 or Howard Hawks’ CEILING ZERO/’36.  Or the forgotten HELL DIVERS/’31, with Wallace Beery and fast-rising Clark Gable, from M-G-M’s undersung action-oriented director George W. Hill.  Better yet, try the Ford bio-pic, WINGS OF EAGLES.   That one’s something special, even if you have to hold your nose at times.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/06/hell-divers-1931.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/wings-of-eagles-1957.html