March On, Marines (1940)

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Director:

B. Reeves Eason

Writer:

Owen Crump (screenplay)

Release Date:

14 December 1940 (USA)

Genre:

Short

Cast

Dennis Morgan	...	Bob Lansing
John Litel	...	Colonel Myers
David Bruce	...	Jimmy Lansing
Mildred Coles	...	Penelope Hayworth
John Ridgely	...	Hap

Runtime:

USA:21 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Technicolor twaddle

Dennis Morgan as a singing drill instructor? Don't buy it for a minute. "March On, Marines" is like a twelve-year-old boy's fantasy of the peacetime Marine Corps - all snappy uniforms, parades and pretty admiral's daughters. The obvious motive of this visually striking two- reeler was to paint a stirring red-white-and-blue portrait of a fighting force whose true nature as hard-ass professional killers wouldn't have been palatable to an innocent 1940 public who needed gearing up for the inevitable conflict to come.

The central story involves Morgan and his brother as two buck sergeants competing for one appointment to Annapolis, and one admiral's daughter. Morgan welcomes new recruits (every one in a soft floppy campaign hat) with a speech so fatherly and democratic it would barely cut the mustard at Scout camp, then leads them through a "sea school" that consists entirely of knot- tying. Pal-o-mine dialog and college-boy rah-rah, right down to a lusty male choir singing "Over the Sea, Let's Go, Men!" gives the impression that the U.S.M.C. is just a swell bunch of clean-living fellas who happen to be the finest-trained soldiers on earth - despite their comical WW1 tin hats and sissified elbow pads on the rifle range. Morgan's DI character never cold-cocks a recruit or even raises his voice above a necessary level. One hopes Morgan, who died in 1994, went to his heavenly reward - because legendary gunny sergeant Lou Diamond would surely have been waiting for him in hell.