Army Girl (1938) User Reviews

The old horse cavalry is kaput

[bkoganbing · 4/10 · 25 October 2014]

Any film with three Oscar nominations to its credit you'd think would get a higher rating. But Army Girl with its abrupt change from comedy to courtroom drama just doesn't quite cut it. And the villain and as the film turns out to have one is more of a lunkhead than anything else.

Captain Preston Foster along with his aide M/Sergeant James Gleason are transferred to a horse cavalry fort which as progress deems is about to be turned into a place for that new mechanized warfare that tanks are bringing. The operation, repair, and maintenance of the tank will take the place of the horse. A fact resented on the post by nearly all from its commanding officer H.B. Warner on down.

Warner has a daughter in Madge Evans and Foster has a self imposed rule about dating army brats, but with a little sly trickery he and Evans are an item.

Things get serious though when on a final test the tank has an accident and both Warner and Gleason are killed. Foster is brought to court martial and nearly blows his career.

Certainly the tank proved its worth in the next year, unfortunately for the enemy. German tanks were infinitely the superior machine. The thought of that little job that Foster and Gleason drive around in going up against one of those panzer tiger tanks is laughable.

Army Girl got Oscar nominations for sound, musical score, and cinematography and did not bring anything home for Republic Pictures. And advances in mechanized warfare dated this film very quickly.

Let's try to make him and his tank feel welcome.

[mark.waltz · 3/10 · 10 July 2022]

Well considering that the tank looks like an oversized coffee grinder (or an old fashioned pencil sharpener), and the tank going over a setting that looks like the old west creates quite a few laughs. That sets up this military comedy for a few laughs, with a great cast of fun character players, especially James Gleason who's driving this big hunk of manhole covers glued together and placed on wheels. With World War II on the way, there's no denying that the enemy would point at this contraption and laugh, so the army better hope that this thing has some doodads and whatchamacallits that makes its laughable appearance more formidable. The plot is supposed to surround the tanks replacement for calvary horses, but the story is barely even dealt with.

There were big smiles from me when that delightful old Warner Brothers contract player Ruth Donnelly popped up as a vivacious hostess inviting Preston Foster to a card party with a group of women which includes leading lady Madge Evans, the daughter of the colonel, tough girl and future mother of Arnold the pig, Barbara Pepper, and the embittered Heather Angel. Donnelly isn't just the Auntie Mame of this group of women, but their surrogate mother as well, so her character provides both laughs and poignant tears.

Also present are Neil Hamilton, H. B. Warner and Ralph Morgan, with veteran comic Billy Gilbert quickly out wearing his welcome as a temperamental Spanish cafe owner. The problem with this film is the supposed main plot is fairly even dealt with, and there's a bunch of nonsensical scenes between Foster and the women that don't advance the plot at all. Evans has an annoying phony southern accent that after a while becomes painful to listen to. Somehow, this film managed to get three oscar nominations, but that was during the time when studios would each submit a film for certain technical categories and only one film for studio could be nominated. As much as I enjoyed the ensemble, it ended up being just a bunch of nothing and far too over long for that sort of thing.