OVP: Above and Beyond (1952)

Film: Above and Beyond (1952)
Stars: Robert Taylor, Eleanor Parker, James Whitmore, Larry Keating
Director: Melvin Frank & Norman Panama
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Motion Picture Story, Score...though for some reason the nominations were for 1953 even though the film was released in November 1952, hence the tag below)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

One of the unusual aspects of films based on real-life, living figures is that while we assume the chapters of that person's life that are important are over if they have a movie being made about them, that's not technically the case, and is weirdly not the case for Above and Beyond, the second in our weeklong look at Oscar nominees for the writing categories.  This film, made in 1952, hosted recent history as its subject (the Manhattan Project and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan), had only happened seven years prior.  As a result, the characters played in the film by Robert Taylor, Eleanor Parker, and James Whitmore were all alive in real life, and in the case of two of them, still making major decisions in their lives that would make this movie complicated in the years that follow.  First, though, let's ground ourselves in the plot.

(Spoilers Ahead) As I mentioned, the film is about the top secret Manhattan Project, the codename for the military mission that planned the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II.  The military leader in charge of the operation is Col. Paul Tibbets (Taylor), a serious man who is chosen for his disciplined approach, and who is advised by his friend Maj. Bill Uanna (Whitmore), someone even more somber than Tibbets.  Tibbets has a young family, including a wife Lucy (Parker) and two sons, one who is only an infant.  In order to keep the secrecy of the mission, all of the military men's families are moved onto the base, and as a result, Lucy is in close quarters with her husband & children, but struggles to understand why Paul is so strict with everyone, and so secretive with her.  As the film progresses, their marriage becomes strained, to the point where she actually leaves him right before the bombing.  After the successful attacks in Japan, the couple is reunited, their past squabbles discarded...

...or so we think.  In real life, Paul & Lucy Tibbets did reconcile after a rough patch in their marriage during the planning of the Hiroshima attacks, but that didn't stick.  Paul's devotion to his career was something that Lucy couldn't ignore, and they eventually truly divorced in 1955, and Paul remarried the next year to a French woman, with whom he had a third son (I can't find anything about whether or not Lucy remarried).  As a result, this is one of the only films I can think of where the couple centered in the love story ended up breaking up after the movie was made (unlike something like First Man where we know that they'll breakup in real life but they just didn't show that onscreen).

If only the actual film was as interesting as this strange tidbit.  Above and Beyond is a boring, sloppy movie.  The film's story getting nominated is a joke, because it's arguably the picture's least successful element.  The entire romance plotline is repetitive & ridiculous (the military and bombing sequences are much better).  Parker is given a flighty, underwritten woman to play, and she fails miserably in grounding Lucy.  Every scene Lucy seems to have no rational concept as to why her husband might keep the military secrets from her, and is upset at every little inconvenience in her marriage despite begging Paul to have her come to stay with him.  This apparently is a little true to real life according to reports I found online, but it makes the Lucy character ridiculous, and you understand that their marriage is not the kind that could support a military career as it's too clingy & needy.  There's really no saving the film, though, from the Lucy character, and Parker doesn't even try to keep her grounded.  The film's score was also nominated, but it's a snore-it's just commonplace war movie cliche (drums, brass, and musical cues that are completely unoriginal to a war movie).