OVP: Mister Roberts (1955)

Film: Mister Roberts (1955)

Stars: Henry Fonda, James Cagney, William Powell, Jack Lemmon, Betsy Palmer, Ward Bond

Director: John Ford & Mervyn LeRoy

Oscar History: 3 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Supporting Actor-Jack Lemmon*, Sound Recording)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Ward Bond: click here to learn more about Mr. Bond (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Ward Bond is unusual, as we've mentioned throughout this month, because he was a true character actor, and someone who, unlike say Thelma Ritter or Walter Brennan, he didn't get semi-lead roles and never was nominated for an Academy Award.  This makes him unusual because Ward Bond holds the distinction of starring in the most Best Picture nominees of any credited actor in the history of the Academy, more than even Jack Nicholson or Robert de Niro or Meryl Streep, with thirteen nominees ranging from Arrowsmith all the way back in 1931-32 to today's film, Mister Roberts, which was the final Best Picture nominee that Bond would appear in in his career.  Mister Roberts was famously a troubled shoot (John Ford fought with both James Cagney & Henry Fonda), one that involved not just two credited directors (Ford & Mervyn LeRoy), but Joshua Logan was uncredited, making Mister Roberts one of the only movies (outside Gone with the Wind) to be helmed by three different Oscar nominees.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in the waning days of World War II, with a bunch of sailors stuck aboard a cargo ship called the Reluctant, where they are under the tyrannical rule of Captain Morton (Cagney).  Morton is frequently at odds with Mr. Roberts (Fonda), a lieutenant on the ship who is desperate to get off this ship, which is safely in a harbor but is not going to see battle, and join the front.  Roberts is frequently fighting on behalf of the men, who are desperate to get shore leave after a year at sea, but Morton wants to keep Roberts under his thumb, primarily because he knows what a bad commanding officer he has been & he doesn't want him to leak that to the brass.  Joined by his pals Doc (Powell) & Pulver (Lemmon), Roberts continues to hatch plans to get under Morton's skin and specifically to get a letter requesting his transfer as well as to get the men shore leave.  He initially has to sacrifice the former to get the latter, but once the men hear about it, the men risk court martial to get Roberts transferred.  The film ends on a bitter note, with Roberts dying in action, and Pulver (until that point something of a coward) standing up to Morton and assuming the antagonistic role that Roberts had played in his life, defending the men.

The movie was an "ehh" for me.  I get what's happening here & I understand why this was a successful play given its mix of tone, but the stage is a different beast and you don't have to feed off of an audience's energy in the same way.  As a result, the mixture of slapstick farce alongside a very serious story feels very off, and the tenor of the picture doesn't quite work.  The cast is a mixed bag-Fonda is good as a revered rule-breaker, even if the script demands nothing from him, but Cagney is actively bad here, not knowing how to play his villain as anything but a hammy Mickey Rooney-level joke.  Jack Lemmon, of course, won an Oscar for this role (his first of eight nominations), and while I get it (seeing Lemmon's signature ability with comedy for the first time had to have been undeniable), it feels weird that he won for something so dismissible, as this is hardly what he'd end up being capable of as he moved to being a leading man.

Mister Roberts was a big film for most of the cast.  Henry Fonda hadn't made a movie in eight years before this (he'd been on stage), and was not favored by Warner Brothers.  This movie was a huge hit, though, and its success brought Fonda back to Hollywood, and two years later he'd be making one of the most important movies of his career, 12 Angry Men.  James Cagney would never make another movie for Warner after this (his home for almost three decades) and William Powell wouldn't make another movie, period, even though he'd live another thirty years.  Ward Bond, of course, would continue to make movies and we'll talk about the most important one of his as an actor next week, but this week I'll admit that I continue to strike out.  While Bond is in this movie, he has a very small part, and so it's hard to really assess his talents as an actor with such a small role.