MGM Back Into Uniform

A First Big War Hit After The War: Battleground (1949)

Don't Forget, said 1949 ads: There Was Fun As Well as Hardship
In This Recently Won War

The Battle Of The Bulge from standpoint of grunts endlessly marching through fog, then snow, from nowhere to nowhere. Battleground was the subject Dore Schary transferred from RKO to his new desk at Metro, revisiting a war lately over, and by other execs reckoning, over at boxoffices as well (MGM's Command Decision of the previous year had lost money). Schary did it despite them, his contract extending that authority, and scored a hit that put him solid: $2.5 million profit, a largest by far for 1949. Much credit belonged to directing William Wellman. He'd been on these uniformed treks before and come back with laurels, plus black ink. Battleground was acting lab too for Metro men with promise: Ricardo Montalban, Marshall Thompson, Jerome Courtland, Don Taylor, Herbert Anderson, James Whitmore ... pretty much the run of hopefuls for postwar stardom, buttressed by vets Van Johnson, George Murphy, others.

Wellman excess milks Doug Fowley's false teeth gag after fashion of jokes he'd similarly flogged in earlier pics; Bill, like other been-around-forever helmsmen, figured what was funny then (as in way back ...) would be funny now. Denise Darcel supplied ooh-la-la and art for Metro marketers, a voluptuary prop with which Wellman tickles Code limit (her dialogue-free exchange with Johnson and a bread-cutting knife raised '49 roofs). Other humor clicks: Van schlepping fresh eggs, seemingly across Europe, but can never pause long enough to scramble and eat them. Battleground made its pile by avoiding grit of Wellman's previous The Story Of GI Joe, being not a sugar-coat (good men do die), but opportunity instead for those who'd served to look back at trudgery of thankfully finished combat and recall lighter moments along with loss. Wellman and crew (not forgetting Schary) knew precisely a '49 public's mood, and with Battleground, enjoyed the biggest success any war movie had between victory and Columbia's From Here To Eternity.