25 Feb Mr. Roberts
Mr. Roberts, WWII Movie starring Henry Fonda and James Cagney
(1955) Mr. Roberts, the executive officer of a Navy cargo chief, the USS Reluctant, clashes with the ship’s dictator of a captain. The action takes place near the end of World War II, and Mr. Roberts greatest wish is to be transferred to active combat.
Thirty minutes into the movie I wasn’t sure why it rated four stars. As far as I was concerned, it was all about Henry Fonda (Mr. Roberts), James Cagney (the evil captain) and Jack Lemmon (the officer/sidekick.) Jack Lemmon got the Academy Award but it could have been any one of them.
An hour into the movie I got it. This movie came out only ten years after the war was over. I’ll bet every sailor, soldier, airman had worked under an officer as obnoxious as Cagney’s character and had also been inspired by one like Fonda.
It’s a comedy with a heart.
The movie is based on the popular book Mr. Roberts by Thomas Heggen. He joined the Navy right after Pearl Harbor and served on supply vessels. According to Wikipedia, he was 14 months on a cargo ship USS Virgo and wrote Heggen wrote a collection of vignettes about daily life on the ship, which he described as sailing “from Tedium to Apathy and back again, with an occasional side trip to Monotony.”
A 1948 Broadway play came next with Henry Fonda playing the title role. It was also successful with Heggen and his producer-director sharing a Tony Award. After this Heggen was under great pressure to write but just couldn’t do it. In 1949, he drowned in his bathtub after taking sleeping pills. He was 30 years old.
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