Tom Brown of Culver (1932)

In film after film of the pre-Code era, the generation who lived through the War to End All Wars looked backward in horror and forward with prescient fear. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) is the best-known and most powerful antiwar film of this era, but it wasn't alone. The following year saw The Last Flight, about a group of aviators drifting through Paris on a cloud of alcohol, trying desperately to forget their experiences. In I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Paul Muni is unable to sell his Croix de Guerre to buy a meal because the pawnbroker's case is already full of medals; and in Heroes for Sale (1933), Richard Barthelmess returns from Europe a morphine-addicted wreck. The twin aviation films The Eagle and the Hawk and Ace of Aces (both 1933) featured protagonists destroyed emotionally by their newfound ability to kill.

So I was surprised to find in William Wyler's filmography a pre-Code film that can't exactly be called pro-war, but lacks the antipathy of many other pre-Code films. The circumstances behind Tom Brown of Culver decreed that it be more rah-rah than the films I discussed above. Universal's intention was to make "a wholesome, virile picture to counteract the sensational gin-and-jazz pictures that were so sadly misrepresenting American youth" (quoted in Jan Herman, A Talent for Trouble: The Life of Hollywood's Most Acclaimed Director, William Wyler, New York: Putnam, p. 107). Instead of the dissolution and misery that other screen soldiers experienced in the early 1930s, Tom Brown finds self-respect and a direction for his life in the Culver Military Academy.

The titular Tom Brown (played, oddly, by an actor named Tom Brown), attempting to earn some money in an open boxing event, is spotted by an Army major (Sidney Toler) who takes pity on him, especially after he discovers that his father, an army surgeon, earned a posthumous Medal of Honor. Tom isn't particularly proud of the medal—echoing Paul Muni, he says "What good is it? Try buying grub with one."—and he'd rather have had a father around to raise him. The colonel gets him a job at a lunch counter run by one of Brown Sr.'s army buddies (Slim Summerville, playing someone named Slim), and later arranges for him to receive a scholarship to the Culver Military Academy, where Tom becomes the archetype of the surly, rebellious student. He won't march in formation, he won't shine his shoes, and he belittles the other cadets for their patriotic fervor. But after a fight with a fellow cadet, Randolph (Ben Alexander), Tom gets his act together and starts to respect the military, finally showing some pride in his father's actions. The film's best scene occurs in Memorial Hall when Ralph reverently shows Tom a picture of his own dead father, and Tom shyly pulls Brown Sr.'s Medal of Honor out of his pocket.

From here on out, the film is defined by radical and often unprompted changes in characters' behavior, especially after Tom discovers that his father (H.B. Warner) was a deserter and is still alive. This causes him to doubt his newfound love for military school—but why? And Ralph, after going AWOL to see a pinup starlet, experiences a dramatic shift, turning in the space of one scene into the surly, rebellious kid he'd railed against when that kid was Tom—but why? But the biggest "but why?" comes when the Army brass find out about Brown Sr.'s desertion and pooh-pooh it away—he witnessed such carnage that he fled, a victim of shell shock, which isn't necessarily so crazy, but it's dropped into the film as almost an afterthought.

Despite the explanation for Dr. Brown's behavior, there's no effort to project from his experiences to any general statement on war. He had a rough time, sure, but these things happen, and the script manages to tie everything into a neat little bow with a rousingly patriotic message. This message, along with the screen image of the Culver Academy, was guaranteed: the studio shot much of its footage at the real Culver Academy, and the superintendent of the school had final approval of the film, making such demands as the elimination of hazing scenes from the final cut. I realize that I haven't seen every film made in the early 1930s, and there are likely fewer films that take a strong antiwar stance than there are films that don't register an opinion on the subject, but it's interesting that the antiwar films are the ones that are remembered.

Wyler wasn't excited about the project; he wrote to his brother that "it will make a lot of money.... It's not artistic in any way but purely commercial in subject and treatment, maybe a little too much so" (quoted in Herman, p. 107). He had already earned his reputation as a director who shoots entirely too many takes, so when filming ran behind schedule because of bad weather, the studio brass naturally assumed that "Ninety-Take Willy" had violated their direct orders limiting the number of takes a director could request. But the film was completed almost on schedule, and it was a critical and financial success.

(I can't believe I didn't mention that this film features near-cameos by such famous and should-be-famous Hollywood players as Eugene Pallette, Andy Devine, Tyrone Power, and Alan Ladd.)