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What Price Glory (1952) -- Trailer for this war drama directed by John Ford

Overview

User Rating:
6.4/10   436 votes
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Director:
John Ford
Writers:
Phoebe Ephron (screenplay) and
Henry Ephron (screenplay) ...
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Contact:
View company contact information for What Price Glory on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
16 March 1953 (Sweden) more
Genre:
Comedy | Drama | Musical | Romance | War more
Plot:
In 1918 France, Captain Flagg commands a disreputable company of Marines; his new top sergeant is his old friendly enemy... more | add synopsis
Plot Keywords:
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User Comments:
John Ford's idea of World War I more (9 total)

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)

James Cagney ... Capt. Flagg
Corinne Calvet ... Charmaine
Dan Dailey ... 1st Sgt. Quirt
William Demarest ... Cpl. Kiper
Craig Hill ... Lt. Aldrich

Robert Wagner ... Pvt. Lewisohn
Marisa Pavan ... Nicole Bouchard
Max Showalter ... Lt. Moore (as Casey Adams)
James Gleason ... Gen. Cokely
Wally Vernon ... Lipinsky
Henri Letondal ... Cognac Pete
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Additional Details

Parents Guide:
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Runtime:
111 min
Country:
USA
Language:
French | English
Color:
Color (Technicolor)
Aspect Ratio:
1.37 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Mono (Western Electric Recording)
Certification:
UK:A (original rating) | UK:U (re-rating) (1991) | USA:Approved (certificate #15706) | Canada:PG (video rating) | Finland:K-16 | Spain:T | Sweden:15
Company:
Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation more

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
This version uses almost no dialogue from the original play and was originally intended to be a musical. more
Goofs:
Factual errors: Capt Flagg's unit is part of the US Marines, which is completely independent of the US Army. Nevertheless, references are made to "the Army" and individual men are referred to as "soldier", which is a term used to refer to men serving in the Army and would be taken as an insult by a Marine. more
Quotes:
Captain Flagg: Quirt loves the bottle, and when he's drunk he is the lousiest, filthiest tramp that ever wore a uniform. He's even worse than I am, and you know I don't allow anybody to get as bad as that. more
Movie Connections:
Referenced in "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch: What Price Harvey? (#3.13)" (1999) more
Soundtrack:
Smiles more

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User Comments

   (Comment on this title)
15 out of 19 people found the following comment useful.
John Ford's idea of World War I, 13 April 2005
5/10
Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York

One of the great anti-war plays of the 1920s was Maxwell Anderson's What Price Glory. The play expressed popular American feeling that we were never going to war again like that and endure the slaughter in those trenches in France that occurred in the short time we were there. Remember we only declared war in 1917 and the thing had been going on in Europe for three years by the time we got there.

One of the things Woodrow Wilson as President and the American Expeditionary Force commander John Pershing insisted on was that the American army when fully trained would fight as a unit and not just be replacement troops for the French and British already there. They deviated only once from that policy when the American First Marine Division became the first American troops in battle in World War I at Belleau Wood. These Marines depicted here are part of those troops.

John Ford is one of our great American directors and when he does his own work on material never before used he's produced some remarkable cinema. But here he takes a serious anti-war play and turns it into one of his service comedies. There certainly are comedic elements in What Price Glory, but it's a serious picture.

The original silent film version done by Raoul Walsh was faithful to Maxwell Anderson's spirit and introduced those two Marines Edmund Lowe and Victor McLaglen who were so popular as Captain Flagg and Sergeant Quirt that they went and starred in a slew of buddy films. In fact they and James Cagney and Pat O'Brien introduced and popularized the buddy film genre.

Cagney steps into McLaglen shoes here and Dan Dailey plays Sergeant Quirt. They played two belligerent oafs in this and play them well, but no one ever thought of re-teaming them.

John Ford should have let this classic alone.

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