Reeling Backward: "King Creole" (1958)

Elvis Presley was not much of an actor, and I've not been much of a fan of his movie work.

I've actually only seen some of the hokier stuff from the '60s, "Viva Las Vegas" and such, which was rapidly-produced pop junk built around Presley's rock 'n' roll persona. "Girls, fast cars and some tunes" was the credo. It was less filmmaking than "marketing synergy" before they had a name for that, his movies bolstering his singing career and vice-versa, keeping him top-of-the-bill status even as the longhairs passed him by musically.

I am astonished to learn Elvis starred in 31 films between 1956 and 1969, including two a year between 1960-63 and three a year after that until hanging it up at the ripe old age of 34.

Presley often cited "King Creole" as his personal favorite role, and I'm inclined to agree.

I think it's one of his best because it wasn't conceived as a "Hey, let's make an Elvis movie" project. Having a legendary director like Michael Curtiz ("Casablanca") at the helm doesn't hurt, either. It was shot on an incredibly fast schedule (even by Elvis standards) of just seven weeks, owing to the fact Presley received his draft notice and got a 60-day deferment from the Army to complete the picture.

Based on a novel by Harold Robbins about a teenage boxing sensation pressured by the mob, the movie was actually developed for James Dean before he was killed in 1955. They switched the setting from New York to New Orleans and boxing to singing, and Curtiz insisted upon shooting in black-and-white with a heavy film noir shading, courtesy of cinematographer Russell Harlan ("Blackboard Jungle"), six times an Oscar nominee without winning.

The screen adaptation was by Herbert Baker, who'd worked on a previous Elvis picture, "Loving You," and Michael V. Gazzo, completing his second and last feature film script before moving on to a second career as an actor including playing frickin' Frankie "Five Angels" Pentangeli himself in "The Godfather Part II," and how the crap did I not know that already?

Shades of Ruth Gordon...

The story setup is a classic "boy from nothing hits the big time and is tempted by corruption of the soul" tale. Danny Fisher is a high-school dropout working as a busboy in one of the Bourbon Street saloons owned by local big man Maxie Fields, who he's never even met. On a dare he gets on stage and belts one out, becoming an overnight singing sensation.

He has daddy issues, vowing never to be a meek sheep like his old man, and is balancing romances between a nice girl and a gun moll. Danny gets squeezed hard by the crimelord and his thugs and is forced into bad choices he'll soon regret.

The supporting cast is simply delish. Maxie is played by Walter Matthau, growly and commanding. Carolyn Jones has a pathetic but alluring pull as Ronnie, Maxie's wastrel mistress/pawn. Dean Jagger, often a cowboy or soldier, plays Danny's pathetic dad, a widower pharmacist who can't keep a job. Vic Morrow, one of those actors you think couldn't possibly have ever been young, has sly charm as Shark, the hoodlum whose blond pompadour is nearly as impressive as Elvis' jet black one.

(Interesting aside: Elvis had naturally sandy blond hair, dying it with shoe polish before getting famous enough for professional color jobs. As the self-appointed Grand Vizier of Cinematic Blondness, I hereby claim Presley for our team.)

Dolores Hart, who also played an Elvis love interest in "Loving You," her film debut, is Nellie, the virginal five-and-dime shopgirl Danny falls for in between being tempted by the older, worldier (read: easy) Ronnie. Hart was pegged as the next Grace Kelly, making 10 pictures in five years before shocking Hollywood by abruptly quitting acting just as Kelly did, only in her case to become a nun instead of a princess.

(More interesting asides: the story of Hart's life was told in the 2011 documentary short, "God Is the Bigger Elvis," which got an Oscar nomination. She attended the 2012 Academy Awards ceremony in full black-and-white habit; the last time she had strolled that red carpet was in 1959.)

Other cast members include Jan Shepard as Danny's long-suffering older sister, Mimi, forced to take on the role of mother after their own passed away. She later falls for Charlie LeGrand, the twice-her-age owner of the titular club played by Paul Stewart. Charlie is pretty much the only guy in Nawlins not under Maxie's thumb, and sees Danny as a way to rejuvenate the failing King Creole.

The movie falls into a pretty steady rhythm of one song every 12 to 15 minutes or so, so there's a pretty decent collection of soundtrack tunes. None of them really stood out to me, though "Hard Headed Woman" hit the top of the charts. Performing as Danny, Elvis does a somewhat understated version of his singular stage routine, a little bit of shakin' but not any egregious pelvis-ing.

I was interested that Danny starts out being backed by bands comprised mostly of African-American jazz musicians, but by the time he's ensconced as the main attraction at the King Creole they've all mysteriously turned white. Perhaps some additional credence for charges of cultural appropriation by rockers, laid out starkly onscreen.

Danny's dynamic with women is... a bit disturbing. On his first date with Nellie, he fools her into thinking he's taking her to a party, when really it's a ruse to get her alone in a seedy hotel room and pressure her into sex. Weirdly, despite seeing right through the ploy she tells him she's still willing to go along, so ensorceled is she by his hunka-hunka burnin' love vibe.

It seems clear they're both virgins, and Danny quickly apologizes for trying to act like the street rat everyone treats him as. From there they have a pretty typical chaste screen romance.

I should mention Nellie first met him when Danny and Shark worked in cahoots to rob her store. They run a couple of jobs together, first on their own then later at Maxie's behest. The latter includes walloping Danny's dad while taking the deposit to the bank, initially thinking it was his father's overbearing boss at the pharmacy. This requires an expensive brain surgery, which Maxie pays for, putting Danny further under his screw.

If the pairing with Nellie is uncomfortable, the one with Ronnie is positively loathsome. She's probably only a few years older but seems worn down as if by decades of abuse, burying herself in drink and self-loathing. She wears an old-school Louise Brooks bob hairstyle, with big pleading eyes and a cynically turned mouth.

Technically she's Maxie's girlfriend, but men like him have little use for women beyond sex, so he's happy to loan her out to his friends or use Ronnie as bait for dumb fish like Danny. They share an early flirtation where he rescues her from some drunks and she makes a pass at him -- while dropping him off at his high school! -- and Maxie, recognizing the attraction, uses her to manipulate Danny.

She's not an innocent by any stretch. In one scene where Danny is forcibly brought to Maxie's place for a meeting, it's clearly a set-up to get him to sleep with Ronnie. She tells him this outright, but uses her victimhood as a weapon, pleading with Danny to stay a few hours to prevent punishment from Maxie.

Ronnie saves Danny's bacon in the end after he's hunted and stabbed by Shark and the rest of Maxie's thugs, driving him to a beach house getaway to get bandaged up and consummate their love without the taint of the city. Of course, the place belongs to Maxie, so he soon shows up for revenge, accidentally shooting Ronnie so she can die in Danny's arms and free him up to return to Nellie.

Elvis did not have the most expressive face in the world, and I noticed that virtually every actor in the movie gets plenty of close-ups from Curtiz other than the star of the show. Still, he's able to put some genuine emotion into his voice and body language that makes us feel for Danny.

I was quite taken with the gloomy sense of doom that feels woven into the very DNA of "King Creole." If it had been made a few years later I think Danny would've been more of an antihero character who winds up perishing in the end, a lesson about the consequence of giving into temptation.

But for an Elvis movie that's only partially an "Elvis movie," "King Creole" stands up well to the test of time. Put it this way: I think it'd be a very watchable picture even if it didn't feature him.

Reeling Backward: "Executive Suite" (1954)

While a fairly typical Golden Age drama in a lot of ways, "Executive Suite" diverged from other Hollywood dramas of the day.

Most notably, it was set inside the top leadership of a national furniture company and focuses on a struggle for power when the enigmatic president suddenly drops dead. That's it. There is no spy intrigue, no murders, not very much sex (or the implication thereof, this still being 1954).

Nope, it's a business story set in a business world.

Hollywood has never liked business settings, then or now. Since few writers or directors came up in the business world, they struggle to find something interesting to tell a story about in a common office setting. Even when creative stories are set at work, they tend to focus on the personalities rather than the actual job, like the TV series "The Office."

Try to think of some modern films that are entirely set in the quotidian workplace, and you'll be hard pressed to name many, especially those that aren't "sexed up" with murdery-mystery elements. "Working Girl," "Glengarry Glen Ross," "9 to 5" and "Michael Clayton" are the only ones I can come up with off the top of my head.

Director Robert Wise also made the interesting choice not to use any musical score or soundtrack of any kind, which was very unusual for the day. The board room proceedings play out in tense silence, which I don't think would've been helped with a ladling of syrupy strings.

"Executive Suite" features the prototypical 'cavalcade of stars' that was popular in that era, particularly from MGM., which had a vast pool of talent to pull from. This includes William Holden, Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Pidgeon, Fredric March, June Allyson, Paul Douglas, Dean Jagger, Louis Calhern, Shelly Winters and Nina Foch.

In a lot of ways it reminds me of a forbear of "Modern Men," focusing on the men and women carousing the Big Apple corridors of power, often winding up in each other's laps or beds. (Or at least what I know of the show from pop culture, having never seen an episode.)

These great actesses are largely relegated to the role of the wife, the secretary, the jilted mistress, the girlfriend -- or some combination thereof.

Produced by John Houseman (who does not appear), written by Ernest Lehman from a script based on the book by Cameron Hawley, this is defintely a tale of a man's world where the womenfolk populate the fringes of the story.

The president, Avery Bullard, is never actually depicted in the film, other than his body being seen put into an ambulance from afar. The film actually opens with a first-person perspective of Bullard exiting the Wall Street headquarters of the Tredway Corporation, filling out a telegram calling for a board of directors meeting for that Friday evening at 6 o'clock, then keeling over dead from an apparent heart attack.

His wallet, which he'd just used to pay for the telegram, flies out of his hand into a street gutter, where it is pilfered for cash and the ID tossed into a trashcan. So it takes a few hours for the police to identify Bullard.

As it would happen, two people in the Tredway building saw the commotion and identified Bullard: George Caswell (Louis Calhern), a conniving playboy board member, and Julius Steigel (Edgar Stehli), an old hand who would seem to be a lawyer or similar advisor. This sets all sorts of higgledy-piggledy into motion.

The men had just been arguing about Bullard's failure to appoint one of his vice presidents as executive VP, thereby anointing an heir apparent. Julius had waved the need off, pointing out that Bullard was a hale 56 years of age, while he himself is almost 71.

Caswell responds to the death by immediately selling off of as much of his stock as possible, anticipating the price will crash when Bullard's death hits the news. But because of the snafu with the wallet, this happens after the stock market has closed, so on Monday he will either turn a handsome profit or be wiped out.

As the story plays on, we learn the identity of the other executives and the background of Tredway. It seems the company's founder died some years ago leaving it in a lurch, and Bullard was able to turn things around and make it very profitable. But in recent years they've gotten away from their hallmark of well-made furniture in favor of cheap stuff like the new K-H line, which is little more than the DIY pressboard so common today.

Don Walling (William Holden) is a hard-charging young designer who was brought in personally by Bullard five years ago to develop new styles and experiment with more efficient production methods. He's mostly a rolled-up-sleeves type hobnobbing with workers in the factory rather than authoring memos in "the tower," aka the NYC HQ. His wife, Mary (June Allyson), is supportive but assertive, insisting that it's time for him to move on from Tredway.

Frederick Alderson (Walter Pidgeon), the treasurer, would seem to be the obvious pick to succeed Bullard. He's been at the company forever, is appropriately grey-haired with a patrician mien, and yearns for a return to the company's glory days.

However, Alderson is outmaneuvered by Loren Shaw (Fredric March), the controller who sees everything in terms of dollars and cents. He gets to the office before anyone, handles the press, the official statement, even arranges the funeral so it will not interfere with Monday's day shift. Shaw also takes the liberty of releasing the company's stellar earnings report early to mitigate the hit to the stock price.

Of course, this has the effect of underming Caswell's little scheme. The two men hatch an arrangement to transfer some of the company's reserved stock to Caswell to cover his wager in return for his vote to make Shaw the next president.

It's a very subtle, internal performance from the great Fredrick March. He plays a man of quiet ambition who has been licking his chops for the top job for years, and obviously has done the legwork to make it happen. If there were an element of intrigue in this story, I'm sure it would be Shaw who had poisoned Bullard's martini or something.

Shaw's not a bad guy, or certainly he would not see himself as such. He's just a (then) new breed of corporate denizen who believes everything should be about maximizing shareholder dividends rather than thinking about and investing in the future.

After Shaw undercuts Alderson's self-confidence, he feels he's blown his own chance at taking over the corner suite, and withdraws his own candidacy. (This is ludicrous, of course; though surrendering after one minor defeat is probably a good indicator he doesn't possess the mettle for the job.)

Alderson and Walling flail around trying to find somebody else who would be less objectionable than Shaw, but the most obvious choice, manufacturing chief Jesse Grimm (Dean Jagger), had already determined to retire, tired of the company's decline in quality products. They try to tag Walter Dudley (Paul Douglas), the likeable sales VP, but Walling feels he'd do little to halt the company's wayward path.

What they don't know is Shaw has already secured Dudley's vote by subtly blackmailing him over his affair with his secretary, Eva (Shelley Winters). Meanwhile, Walling puts himself forward as an alternative. Alderson is initially hesitant given his age, and likely his own pride, but eventually comes around.

The other major player is Julia Tredway (Stanwyck), daughter of the company founder and owner of the largest share of company stock. It was also a well-known secret that she had carried on a 10-year affair with Bullard, who ultimately rejected her in favor of the company. She's easily manipulated by the men, particularly Shaw.

Stanwyck has one great scene where she's confronted by Walling, and she nearly throws herself off the skycraper balcony. It's not a big part, but Stanwyck makes the most of it.

Foch plays Erica Martin, the president's secretary and keeper of secrets. It's an interesting role, played very close to the vest as the loyal person who carries out orders. She's the one who makes the calls, arranges the meetings, tallies the votes. Shaw tries to press her for dirt on Bullard but is sharply rebuffed.

Foch is in the only peformer in the film to receive an Oscar nomination, which must have stung for all these male thespians wearing their three-piece suits and spouting urgent dialogue. The film also received nods for the cinematography (by George J. Folsey), costumes (Helen Rose) and art direction.

In general I love black-and-white pictures, though I do wish this one had been in color. All the handsome wood board rooms and costumes probably would've looked quite amazing in Technicolor.

An odd egg of a movie that still slides seamlessly into mainstream Hollywood fare of that era, "Executive Suite" is well-acted and undeniably entertaining. Even if business films have hardly ever been a going concern, this one is cinematically profitable.

Reeling Backward: "Bad Day at Black Rock" (1955)

There are no close-ups in "Bad Day at Black Rock," a film that deliberately keeps the characters at arm's length. Close-ups are sustenance to most film actors, who feel like mannequins put through their paces unless they get a chance to scowl and sob and seethe and otherwise use their marvelous faces to their full effect.

I imagine that acting in this film was like being on a forced diet.

"Bad Day" could be best described as a film noir Western. Director John Sturges started as an editor, then directed a lot of B-pictures until he broke into the A-list with this movie. He would go on to make "The Magnificent Seven," "The Great Escape" and "The Old Man and the Sea," among others.

The film has a very painterly quality, wide vistas filling in the backdrop as characters saunter and interact in the foreground. It's filled with bright desert colors, deep blues and browns, except for the main character who is a slab of black, like a null space in the middle of the frame.

Even if you haven't seen "Bad Day" you're probably aware of the premise. A one-armed stranger gets off a train in the middle of nowhere, a collection of a few shanties collectively known as Black Rock. It is the first time the train has stopped here in four years. His presence provokes strong resentment and suspicion among the townsfolk, especially after the newcomer starts poking around asking questions.

He doesn't say very much about himself, only giving his name -- John J. Macreedy -- and inquiring about the whereabouts of a local Japanese-American farmer named Komoko with whom he apparently has some business. The cowboys insist Komoko was interned at the start of World War II, and no one's heard from him since.

As the story takes place it is late 1945, a few months after the war has ended. We eventually learn that Macreedy has just mustered out of the Army, losing the use of his arm in Italy. And that, despite the loss of his limb, he's more than a match for any headstrong cowpunchers. They foolishly take his retiring ways as cowardice.

"I believe a man is as big as what'll make him mad. Nobody around here seems big enough to get you mad," observes Smith (Robert Ryan), a rancher who seems to have everyone quietly under his grip.

Macreedy is played by Spencer Tracy, who didn't particularly want to be in the movie and for people who didn't especially want him in it, either.

Millard Kaufman, who wrote the screenplay from an adaptation by Don McGuire based on a short story by Howard Breslin, thought Tracy was far too old to play an Army platoon commander. Tracy, then in his mid-50s and struggling badly with alcoholism that made him appear much older, had to be cajoled and threatened and finally fooled -- by the assurance that Alan Ladd was ready to step into the role -- before finally committing to play in it.

It's quite obvious that Tracy still has his left arm and is just tucking it into his suit pocket. Interestingly, nobody in the movie actually refers to Macreedy as missing his arm, though every description ever written about the movie contains that description. In one exchange two men opine about the stranger's "stiff arm" and if he's hiding something in his pocket, like booze or TNT.

Coley Trimble, the most antagonistic of the locals played by Ernest Borgnine, does accuse Macreedy of endangering the roads with his "one-armed driving," though that's a quibble as you can drive with one arm despite having two. This after intentionally running Macreedy off the road in the Jeep he had rented from the local gas station, run by the town's only female, Liz Worth (Anne Francis).

When he returns to town, Macreedy is accosted by Coley for his poor driving, and even offers to pay for the damages to the other man's car. It seems that nothing will rile up this odd duck of a stranger.

Except, of course, something eventually does. It appears Macreedy is finally ready to give up on his mysterious mission, gaining the help of the local veterinarian/mortician, Doc Velie (the inimitable Walter Brennan), who offers the stranger the use of his old hearse. In the meantime, Smith has leaned on Liz, so no more Jeep rentals are available.

Hector (Lee Marvin), the most mean-spirited of the cowboys, rips out the distributor cap and spark plug wires, stranding Macreedy. It seems he has asked one question too many and they're planning to off him when night comes.

Little do they know, the unarmed one-armed man in black has them right where he wants them. And now he's find a purpose in life that had been missing.

It would be interesting to see what this movie would look like if it was made today. No doubt it would quickly dissolve into a bloody shoot-em-up or broken bones melee. But other than Macreedy taking out the beefy Coley with some karate chops and flips, there really isn't much violence.

The film wound up turning a healthy profit and earning three Oscar nominations: for Sturges, Tracy and Kaufman.

Even at a quick 81-minute run time, "Bad Day" has an almost languid pace to it as the tension gradually builds and builds. The screenplay drops hints and forebodings, and we're able to figure things out long before the characters speak the words: Komoko was killed and his farm burned to the ground, and the entire town has been keeping this dark secret ever since.

In a way, it's as if all life stopped at Black Rock that day four years earlier, and everyone's just been waiting around for someone like Macreedy to show up. The secret has become their purpose for existence.

Other notable players include Dean Jagger as Tim Horn, the drunken sheriff who has lost all his grit; John Ericson as Pete Wirth, Liz' weakling, pompadoured brother who runs the local hotel; Russell Collins as Hastings, the timid telegraph and train station man; and Walter Sande as Sam, owner of the local diner who delivers one of the film's most remembered exchanges of dialogue in a strangled honk of a voice:

Sam: "What'll you have?"
Macreedy: "What've you got?"

"Chili and beans."
"Anything else?"
"Chili without beans."

"Bad Day at Black Rock" is short on story but long on mood and themes half-buried in the desert dust. It has the feeling of something both ancient and modern, as the last vestiges of the Old West resist an intruder it feels has no business there.

The town is a piece of history, trapped in amber and looking very much the same as it ever did, even though its heart died a long time ago. The ending has a hopeful note, that evil will be punished and Black Rock can start to heal. But my guess is Macreedy's was the last train stop before the tumbleweeds took over.

Reeling Backward: "Twelve O'Clock High" (1949)

"Twelve O'clock High" is a terrific war movie, one more concerned with the toll combat takes on men than any fleeting glory it might bring. But the title is spectacularly misleading.

Given a moniker like that, I think most people would believe it was a movie full of dogfights and aerial combat. There is in fact one fairly long fight sequence -- made up largely of actual combat footage from World War II taken by both American and German personnel. But this 1949 film is more about what happens on the ground in between combat missions.

What strikes me most about this film directed by Henry King -- who had a long career spanning the silent era through the Golden Age, from 1915 to 1962 -- is that it's not structured anything like other war pictures of that era, or most Hollywood films in general.

The main character, played by Gregory Peck, doesn't show up until nearly a half-hour in. The supporting characters aren't just there to make the star look good, but fit organically into a group dynamic. The hero doesn't die gloriously in the end, but suffers a nervous breakdown and is unable to take part in the most important mission of the war.

Indeed, the framing device of one the U.S. Eighth Air Force Group 918 members returning to their old, abandoned airfield at Archbury features not the guts-and-glory commander, but his mild-mannered adjutant (a job title that's essentially military-ese for secretary). He finds the old Robin Hood toby jug that had been used at the group headquarters -- turned outward on the officer's club mantle to indicate a mission the next morning -- for sale in a thrift store, buys it and returns to the grown-over field to reminisce.

Even the poster for the film is misleading. It shows Peck toking on a cigarette wearing flying goggles, with the faces of the other cast mostly obscured as they're arrayed behind him. It even features Peck with a nurse at the bottom, implying some sort of romance. In actuality, this is the only woman who appears in the movie, and it's for about two lines of dialogue.

The set-up is the 918th is part if the early air war against Germany in late 1942, and have been stuck with the label of the cursed group that always seems to suffer the highest casualties. The commander, Col. Keith Davenport (Gary Merrill), is beloved by the men and they by him -- too much so, in fact. Davenport is accused of "over-identifying" with his men, too concerned over losing them than accomplishing their critical missions.

They even have to endure the taunts of "Colonel Haw-Haw," a German radio broadcaster very much in the tradition of Tokyo Rose, who seems to know how many planes the 918th lost during that day's mission, and even the names of the planes and their captains. Things have recently grown much worse with the advent of low-altitude daylight missions -- "precision bombing" is what the brass (inaccurately) calls it.

Davenport is relieved of his command in favor of Brigadier Gen. Frank Savage (Peck), who's determined to be a by-the-book man who lights a fire under his pilots and crews. He gives them a rousing greeting speech -- so rousing, in fact, that every single pilot in the group asks to be transferred out.

"Stop making plans. Forget about going home. Consider yourselves already dead. Once you accept that idea, it won't be so tough," Savage thunders. Not exactly inspiring stuff.

The movie spends quite a lot of time contrasting the different leadership styles of Savage and Davenport, with plenty of faults to be found in each. Savage's harsh methods eventually pull the 918th out of its nosedive, but not before nearly ending in disaster when an inspector general is dispatched to find out why all those transfer requests have been held up.

And Savage bends his iron ways somewhat to accommodate the needs of the men. In fact, by the end he's the one arguing to the boss, Major General Pritchard (Millard Mitchell), that his crews are not just faceless numbers but human beings -- a virtual copy of Davenport's earlier perspective.

"Twelve O'clock High" is based on the novel by Berine Lay Jr. and Sy Bartlett, who also wrote the screenplay (with some alterations by King). Real events and people highly influenced both the book and the movie (not to mention a short-lived 1960s television series).

Most notably is the character of Jesse Bishop (Robert Patten), who received the Medal of Honor for heroic actions, which is where the movie begins. A B-17 crash-lands into the Archbury field -- Hollywood stuntman Paul Mantz piloted the plane by himself to achieve this amazing shot -- after a harrowing ordeal. The captain's head had been split open by an enemy shell, causing him to go into a crazed state and try to wrest the controls away from Bishop, his co-pilot. Bishop flew another two hours, flying the plane with one hand while fighting off his deranged commander with the other, and completing the bombing run.

This is an almost exact account of Lt. John C. Morgan, who really did win the Medal of Honor under these circumstances. Bishop is later killed on a subsequent mission -- one of the events that help send Savage over the edge -- but in reality Morgan survived the war, though he was shot down and was interred at a P.O.W. camp.

In the movie, Bishop is the only man on the base who Savage intitially respects, and uses him as his liaison to reach out to the other pilots, convincing them to drop their mass transfer request. Over time, though, Savage grows closer to some other offers, notably Maj. Joe Cobb (John Kellogg) and Maj. Harvey Stovall (Dean Jagger), the aforementioned adjutant.

Stovall is an interesting odd duck. He's an older bald man, a "retread" from the first World War who gave up a successful law practice to reenlist, but was told he was too old for anything but desk jockeying. Stovall loved Davenport perhaps more than any other man in the group, but his first loyalty is to the 918th, so he becomes Savage's first conscript in the battle to gain the men's trust.

It's a terrific, understated performance, and Jagger deservedly won an Oscar for it.

The other major character is Lt. Col. Ben Gately (Hugh Marlowe), the number two man under Davenport. The son and grandson of war heroes, Gately is labeled a coward and malingerer by Savage, who demotes him from Air Exec to crew captain. He orders Gately to paint his plane with the name "Leper Colony," and has every sulker and misfit in the outfit assigned to him. Gately shows his true stripes in the end, though, hiding a cracked spine through three successful missions.

It's a rather unique role for Peck, in that there's not a trace of cuddliness or Atticus Finch-esque nobility to Frank Savage. He's a man with a job that needs to get done, and everything in his existence is subservient to that goal. We never find out a single thing about Savage other than his military duties -- does he have a wife? children? -- as he exemplifies sacrifice and self-reliance.

Like "Battleground" and other WWII pictures I've been privileged to discover, "Twelve O'Clock High" is a war movie with more soul and depth than I'd have ever guessed capable of Hollywood of that era.

3.5 stars out of four