PARACHUTE BATTALION (1941)

Released just a few months before Pearl Harbor, this may have been intended as pro-military propaganda, but it works better as a light buddy comedy in the old Cagney/O'Brien tradition. The film follows three men who join the Army's Parachute Corps in Fort Benning, Georgia: Robert Preston is an Ivy League football star, and Buddy Ebsen is a hayseed farmboy, but the focus is on Edmond O'Brien as a young man on the road to alcoholism who joins to get rid of his self-esteem problem; it turns out he's the estranged son of the Corps' commander (Robert Barrat). The three meet and become friends on a train to Fort Benning, where they also have a run-in with their soon-to-be instructor (Harry Carey) and his daughter (Nancy Kelly). O'Brien and Preston become rivals for the hand of Kelly; Carey, all crusty and hard-boiled on the outside, turns out to be mostly a softie who inspires great loyalty among his charges. Richard Cromwell plays a twitchy coward who goes nuts up in the sky just as he's supposed to make his first jump. O'Brien is instrumental in helping Carey handle the situation, but he's also afraid to jump, so the rest of the movie is about how O'Brien gains self-confidence so he can make the jump, regain his father's respect, and get the girl. The performances are fine (and you can see the seed of Prof. Harold Hill in Preston's cocky character) with Paul Kelly providing strong support as Carey's assistant. Nancy Kelly (no relation) is best known as the neurotic mother in THE BAD SEED. Ebsen is his usual gangly self and gets to do a novelty dance to "Turkey in the Straw." The film was shot partly at Fort Benning, and there is plenty of footage of men from the real battalion in parachute action. An RKO B-movie that's almost up to the standard of Warner Brothers. [TCM]