Can Weather and Ocean Crews Go Back Again?
Our Elk’s Clubhouse shut down a couple years ago. The Boy Scouts are gone. Do men no longer need fraternal orders? I was never a joiner, so would not speculate. Enough to say such groups are passed, and there’s the end to it.I ponder this for happenstance of seeing two in tandem: It’s Always Fair Weather and Ocean’s 11. Greenbriar visited both before, a comparative long ago. I note their shared mood this time, or maybe it’s me at a point to reckon with what is past and not coming back. Weather failed in 1955 for, some claim, a glum meditation on dedicated friends from the war, with nothing to bind them ten years later in peace. Gene Kelly, Dan Daily, and Michael Kidd are the three. Might actual wartime service have enhanced performance among them? Kelly was Navy-stationed in Washington to make documentaries, Dailey in the Signal Corps. So far as I can tell, Michael Kidd, born 1915, did not enlist, nor was he drafted. None of the trio appear to have carried a weapon or fired one at enemies.
I checked Danny Ocean and his crew, all eleven WWII vets specially trainedfor complex missions, latter as of 1960 to knock over Vegas casinos. Here’s service account for the group: Sinatra 4-F, Dean Martin drafted, served a year in Akron, Ohio, discharged as 4-F, Sammy Davis drafted 1943 to the Special Services, entertained troops, Peter Lawford a damaged arm, so ineligible, Richard Conte, briefly in the Army, discharged for eye trouble, so came home and made war movies, Joey Bishop, another with Special Services, and stationed at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, Henry Silva, born 1928, too young. Buddy Lester was in the Navy through WWII, Norman Fell a tail-gunner for the Army Air Corps, Richard Benedict and Clem Harvey, no specific info. Of these fourteen, Ocean’s eleven and Weather’s three, two had seen action, as in shooting and shot at. I wonder if Buddy Lester and Norman Fell talked that over quietly during an Ocean set break. It’s Always Fair Weather and Ocean’s 11, light as both were served, told of men connected through a period of intense danger, during which we may assume some or all rescued their comrades where needed. Is debt to anyone who saved your life ever discharged?
This was serious thread that tied It’s Always Fair Weather and Ocean’s 11 for me, giving both a stature and ongoing fascination. I’ll not grasp their drama fully for never having served. Being too young for Viet Nam kept me out of that harm’s way. How did it feel to be a movie star and play heroic soldiers when you’d never been one? Would I be a better man for at least joining the National Guard and getting basic trained? (means of ducking Nam for many) We admire a Lee Marvin and director Samuel Fuller of The Big Red One for having been the real stuff. They say military service builds a lot of character, be it war or peacetime. I won’t doubt that a minute, and sometimes it gnaws. A scene in Ocean’s 11 moved me where I’d not noticed it at all before: one of the heist crew checks out a funeral home where loot is hid, and observes the arrival of an American Legion honor guard. Legion membership was considerable in 1960, but now? My town does not have a chapter, a nearest one in Boone, Lenoir, or near Yadkinville. I wonder how many active members are left, or who today would even realize what the American Legion is, or was.
It's Always Fair Weather suggests that life for returning warriors might have been a dead end, a cue for at least men in 1955 to wonder if this was their story. Did the notion, and word spread of it, queer attendance? There is music and comedy, the latter barbed beyond norm for musical comedy. We admire Weatherfor truth-telling as we want to define it, but how many of us can know of men’s feelings who fought, and were here confronted with futility of lives since? I’m told co-directors Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, latter 4-F per “high blood pressure,” clashed frequent on this film. Did one seek to lighten up with the other wanting to double down? MGM sold It's Always Fair Weather as a “gigantic and joyous musical,” which was, of course, what sales staff wished it had been. Open of buddies off battlefields, tippling stateside to celebrate, is boisterous after preferred fashion of soldiers “rehabilitating,” so by that measure, a dance with feet in trash can lids seems apt. The ten-year-later reunion, planned when “Ted, Doug, and Angie” swear to stay pals, foresees ice flow coming. Did passing years yawn wider then? A man’s life span being shorter in 1955, 66.7 the average limit, as opposed to today at 76.1, made ten years a meaningful chunk off anyone’s stay.
We assume that Ted, Doug, and Angie had no contact over that decade; none refer to having written or spoke. This of course is necessary and understandable movie shorthand, but I’d like knowing if for-real WWII vets kept in touch, met perhaps for annual reunions. Pearl Harbor survivors had gatherings, these ending only when the last of them passed. Postwar adjustment was a known “challenge” (lord, I am sick of that word as applied to everything but taking lids off peanut butter). Question burns … how many ex-combatants were disillusioned by their lives since combatting? Having three, maybe four years yanked off your life costs a lot of momentum. We hear of vets who would not discuss the war, even mention it. Most with fathers who fought regret not asking them more, especially now that it is too late. I came home one 1969 afternoon from the Liberty and parents asked, What did you see?, The Bridge at Remagen my reply, to which my father said casually, “I was there.” No follow-up from nitwit me, a lapse I’d give much to return to and fix now. It's Always Fair Weather had to have gotten under skins which Gene Kelly on roller skates and singing “I Like Myself” could not altogether alleviate.
Frank Sinatra seems to have left shadings to Ocean mates, his character but cardboard beside several of theirs. Impression is Frank thinking little enough of Ocean’s 11 to drop in/out, letting steam rooms sub for the set even where his “Danny” was needed. A second half of Ocean's seems written around him, a reason why Caesar Romero steals the show casually as Frank's crew emptying Vegas safes. Richard Conte plays his part like late 40’s noir, that welcome, in fact needed. Too much is glib, saucy talk with, or about, “broads,” a drag on tempo. Moments worthwhile still angle ways in, Buddy Lester in low down circumstance as a stripper’s front man (and husband), Peter Lawford a dependent mom’s boy (how many real-life fighting men let this happen?), Dino the doubter with a highlight where he bluntly tells the others how absurd their scheme is. Ocean’s 11 is among largest of missed opportunities that still manages to please. I’d guess they flew a “Lighten Up” flag from starting, the goal to ring-a-ding-ding customers and confine war-stress to casino check rooms.
How credible was the concept? Could war buddies once trained and active, but fifteen years before, manage a grab like this? Ocean’s 11 suggests yes, any of veterans able to swing back into action where called, ours a nation of sleeper commandos, awaiting a bugle’s toot. Reassuring if so in 1955, still yet in 1960. Remember 60's cycle gang pics with fed up vets roused to action by modern-day Goths sacking quiet communities? I was firmly with defenders for their number including character favorites who had earlier fought aliens or monsters that menaced us. Kenneth Tobey as a father opposing hippies in Billy Jack had my vote. Tobey by the way was rear gunner on a B-25 bomber, later vanquished The Thing, but Billy Jack and ilk was 1971, heroes that had saved us more spent than when Ted/Doug/Angie danced, or Danny and pals knocked over Vegas. I was surprised in 1980 by The Sea Wolves and Gregory Peck, David Niven, with Roger Moore, pulling yet another impossible mission (Peck spared WWII by injury sustained during dance instruction with Martha Graham, Niven with extensive service, part of D-Day landings and invasion of Europe, Moore turning eighteen 10/45, conscripted into the Royal Army Service Corps, became an officer). Screen wars are today fought by baby faces with three-day stubble of beard, vets of male fashion covers if not actual service. Updated Ocean’s 11 (and 12, and 13, still later an 8) has criminals and “big operators” robbing bigger criminals and big operators, all with insufferable smugness in common. It’s Always Fair Weather remade is ruled out, Ted/Doug/Angie not needing to bother with a ten year reunion so long as they have Facebook.
