Big Jim McLain : narrator?

narrator?

Unable to TIVO so can't play this back to be sure, but it sounds like Robert Ryan. Comments?

Re: narrator?

The imdb complete cast page says it's Harry Morgan.

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I knew it was someone familiar - Harry Morgan!

Cats are delicate dainty animals who suffer from a variety of ailments ... except insomnia.

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No, it's definitely Harry (Col. Sherman T. Potter} Morgan.

Robert Ryan's politics were definitely way left of center. He disliked John Wayne over the issue of Hollywood blacklisting.

Wayne's dislike for him was more over the fact that he felt Ryan was unprofessional. When they worked together on Flying Leathernecks, Ryan went out of his way to overact and disrupt shooting because he felt the script was too pro-war. Wayne often said he could work with anyone, regardless of their politics, as long as when the camera rolled they did their job.

After Flying Leathernecks, there was no way the two of them would ever work together again.

Re: narrator?

Harry Morgan narrates, unmistakably.

Another reason for Wayne's and Ryan's rocky relationship may have been that while Wayne sat out WWII in safety, and only ever played military men in movies, Robert Ryan had enlisted in the Marine Corps and served with distinction during the war. His anti-war sentiments came about from having actually experienced war. It's very easy to urge others to fight, as Wayne did, when you've never done it yourself.

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Hob, my understanding is the the Duke tried to enlist, but the President felt that he would do more good for the war effort by making patriotic films.

Any truth to that?

Also, Ryan and Wayne did work together after Lying Feathernecks*, in The Longest Day.















*a small attempt at wit

Re: narrator?

No, FDR had a few other things to tend to besides asking some actor to enlist or not enlist. Besides, Wayne was still not an important enough star for anyone to have made such a request of him. No effort was made to stop Clark Gable, Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda, or James Stewart from enlisting, or to keep Errol Flynn -- a far bigger star than Wayne who tried to enlist but was termed 4F -- or others out of the service.

Wayne supposedly thought about enlisting but decided not to because he had a family...unlike any of the other 16,000,000 men who served. Even his pal John Ford never quite forgave Wayne for shirking his duty during WWII. Ford apparently deliberately chose to have the actors and crew of his film They Were Expendable who had served in the war listed with their service initials (U.S.N., etc.) as a way of tweaking Wayne's sensibilities, since he just had his name, with no service initials, amidst a lot of other people who had served -- including the top star, Robert Montgomery, as well as Ford, both of whom had been in the Navy.

The same year he made Big Jim McLain, Wayne, a Taft supporter, showed up at the GOP convention in Chicago where, upon seeing a group of WWII vets carrying American flags while marching for Eisenhower, he yelled at them, "How come you don't have a hammer and sickle!?" This at a group of Republican veterans who had actually fought for their country. He was a bit touchy about his lack of service.

"Lying Fethernecks". Like they say on TBS, very funny!

Re: narrator?

No effort was made to stop Clark Gable, Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda, or James Stewart from enlisting…

hobnob53, how do you know?

Re: narrator?

Not to put too fine of a point on it, but Ryan didn't enlist in the Marines until 1944, two years after the war had started, where he served out the war as a drill instructor at Camp Pendleton. Yes, he did serve during WWII, but how much "distinction" was involved is debatable, nor did he have any actual experience in warfare as he never left the US. That's not said to belittle what he did, but the hyperbole you use to try and draw some sort of moral or ethical delineation between Ryan and Wayne based on their WWII experiences is a little much. Neither man actually fought in the war, and both spent it "in safety".

The fact that Ryan enlisted in the first place seems at odds with his political philosophies, one of them being the pacifist beliefs he shared with his wife. A cynical person might point out that Ryan didn't enlist until after he got a contract guarantee with RKO Pictures, where he then co-starred in a movie for RKO coincidentally titled Marine Raiders which was released about 6 months after he enlisted. Even more coincidental is he somehow managed to be stationed a few hours away from Hollywood throughout the war. A very cynical person might even suggest that his enlistment was more of a career move (maybe a condition in getting the contract with RKO in return for easy duty) than patriotism...but I'm not that cynical.

I grant you that if Wayne had really wanted to serve, he could have done something about it. He was exempted from military service due to his age and the fact he was married with children. I've also read that he was under threat of lawsuit from Republic Pictures if he broke his contract, and that Republic made efforts to keep the Selective Service from changing his draft status.

Still, I do believe he put his career over joining the military. Maybe he was under the belief he could do more for the war effort as an actor than he could otherwise. He did spend time touring bases and hospitals in the Pacific Theater during the war, and gave a lot of his time to raising money for the war effort. I know it's been said by many who knew him that not serving in the military in some capacity during the war was the biggest regret of his life.

Re: narrator?

It sounds like you got most of your information from Ryan's Wikipedia page. No offense meant, since I went there myself to look him up the other day. Anyway, basically I find your post even-handed and reasonable in most respects.

Ryan may have deliberately waited until he got his RKO contract before enlisting, though I didn't see any evidence of that. An equally valid interpretation is that once he received his contract he felt freer to enlist since his family would have some financial security. Still, it's certainly true he could have enlisted earlier.

As to how he served, again, where is no evidence that Ryan or RKO had any part in determining where he was posted or what kind of duty he received. The fact that he stayed "at home" in California would have been the Marine Corps's decision. It's unlikely the Marines entertained requests from celebrities as to where or how they would serve. True, this was a factor in certain cases, notably Clark Gable's, and was an issue with some others, but this was something attempted by the studios, not the actors themselves. Most actors sought combat and rebelled against efforts to keep them in safety. This, plus the fact that in 1944 Ryan was hardly a star and therefore not a major "property", made it much less likely that he received, let alone requested, special treatment.

The Wiki article indicated that he came to share his wife's supposed pacifist views well after the war, so it's not at all clear that Ryan was a pacifist at the time. Many liberals fought in the war, so politics didn't enter into it. The one true Hollywood pacifist was Lew Ayres, who after declaring himself a conscientious objector was fired by MGM and virtually blacklisted by the industry, though he later volunteered as an ambulance driver and was decorated for bravery under fire. I suppose one could argue that Ayres's example led Ryan to enlist, but on the other hand it would have been easier still just to stay out of it. At 34, Ryan was above draftable age and no one questioned his failure to enlist sooner.

I've read that Wayne was under threat of a lawsuit from Republic, but that sounds overblown to me, because the notion that a movie studio would publicly sue to prevent an actor from serving his country would have been disastrous for that studio in World War II. Pulling strings behind the scenes, yes, but outright public opposition, including a lawsuit? Never. Wayne could have enlisted and didn't. Ryan, whatever the circumstances of his service, did at least volunteer to wear his country's uniform.

It doesn't actually bother me that Wayne didn't serve as such. What bothers me are two things: first, that in later years Wayne vigorously played at war after having avoided the real-life chance to participate in his nation's deadliest life-and-death struggle; and second and most egregiously, that Wayne, having shirked his own chance to serve, for decades afterward crusaded for others to serve, supported wars in which others risked -- and lost -- their lives, denounced not just draft-dodgers but conscientious objectors and honest opponents of war, and as we saw in that 1952 incident, had the audacity to attack real veterans who had actually fought because they were supporting a fellow Republican Wayne didn't think conservative enough. Calling patriotic Americans Communists is bad enough, but in that case it was inexcusably disgraceful and monumentally hypocritical.
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