HERE COME THE MARINES

US, 1952, 67 minutes, Black and white dot
Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall.
Directed by William Beaudine.

Along with the many very small-budget second features in the 1940s and 1950s featuring Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall, this is just a footnote in film history.

Gorcey and others appeared in the 1937 film, Dead End, with a group of young actors called the Dead End Kids developing to The Bowery Boys. They had a number of incarnations in short films including the East End Kids. Eventually, with Leo Gorcey as star and producer, they made a number of filler films, very American in their style.

In this one, Slip (Gorcey) and his friends are called up to serve in the Marines. this provides material familiar from the many propaganda films 10 years earlier for World War II recruitment.There are, of course, ups and downs with severe Sgt Majors, drills, exercises…

The film features Huntz Hall and his distinctive kind of dopey comedy, completely ineffectual in his marine drills, but encountering the officer in charge who served with his father – and thus he gets a great deal of promotion while messing up everything. By the end, there is a new commander and Gorcey finds that he served with his father – which leads to the loss of promotion by Hall and consequent jokes.

A footnote in cinema history.