Service with the Colors

This short, nominated for an Academy Award, is not a stellar piece of work. The script is average, acting too obvious in spots and there is at least one character who irritates so glaringly that it's clear that the audience is supposed to dislike him. Still, this is somewhat interesting, given that its production values technically are first-rate. Hardly exceptional, but worth watching at least once. Turner Classic Movies runs this as filler and almost invariably airs it during their "31 Days of Oscar" every March. Not too bad.

Service with the Colors (1940)

*** (out of 4)

Oscar-nominated, Technicolor short has four men joining the Army at the same time and we see their struggles as they try to make it. The film mainly centers on one who joined just to fight in a war but he isn't getting his way because there's no war to fight. He ends up battling with one of his sergeants (Robert Armstong) who though it all still sees something in him. This is a pretty good little film that manages to get a good message off even though Pearl Harbor would happen not too long after this was released. The film features some very strong performances by King Kong famed Armstrong as well as William Lundigan, Henry O'Neill, William T. Orr and Herbert Anderson. The direction by Eason isn't over the top and he has no trouble at telling the story and even packing a lot of stuff into the 20-minute running time. I think Armstong's character comes off a lot nicer than he probably would have in real life but that's a minor issue.

Watchable mainly because it's one of those Warner Bros. short subjects from the early '40s featuring an interesting cast of stock players: Robert Armstrong, William Lundigan, Herbert Anderson, Henry O'Neill and William T. Orr as the soldier with a chip on his shoulder redeemed by his patriotic commanding officer.

Orr was then an up-and-coming Warner Bros. actor before he became a TV producer and plays the soldier who ends up going AWOL before he is caught. His tough sergeant (Robert Armstrong) has an unbelievable role as a man who's really soft at heart and keeps giving the soldier another chance whatever his shenanigans. William Lundigan is a level-headed army buddy who tries to talk sense into Orr.

Strictly a by the numbers patriotic short that somehow got nominated for a Best Short Subject Oscar. Best aspect is the color photography photographed at the Presidio training center in San Francisco.

Four peacetime recruits wind up training under Sergeant Robert Armstrong at the Presidio in San Francisco.

It's basically a peacetime recruiting film. The Second World War had been been going on officially for ten months, and the 'Phony War' phase had ended in the spring. Our involvement was in the offing, with Lend-Lease, and talk of the first peacetime draft in our history. With most of Warner's Technicolor shorts of the period, bright colors are emphasizes. Here, though, it's brown: the brown of uniforms, of wood and of dirt, with the splashes of colors largely limited to the Golden Gate Bridge.

A month after this movie was released, the first Peacetime draft began.

Bob.

A few familiar faces from the big and small screen will be recognized by the viewer of Service With The Colors. This short subject from Warner Brothers is about service in the peacetime army which in 1940 everyone knew was going to become a wartime army any day now.

People enlist for all kinds of reasons in the army during time of peace and one of those enlisting is William T. Orr. Watching this one has to remember this was the Depression and jobs just weren't to be had. I could relate to that because in my family my one surviving uncle now 96 wanted to enlist in the Navy, but was implored with tears by my grandmother not to do it. So he sat around and couldn't get a job until World War II started. Who knows if he had enlisted, he might have been killed at Pearl Harbor. As it was he survived the Battle Of The Bulge.

In any event Orr had the same idea as my uncle. Three hot meals a day and a place to sleep. The film is about how those notions get radically changed by Colonel Henry O'Neill and Sergeant Robert Armstrong among others.

And among others you'll recognize William Lundigan and Herbert Anderson as fellow enlistees. All in all a decent short film which if expanded could have been a good feature.