I just heard about this movie amonth ago while reading the book Midway Between You and Me written by Rogenna Brewer. Hearing the characters talking about it made me want to see it, even though I now know how it ends. I was just wandereing if it was any good. The seabees really interest me, and I was wondering if this film was worth watching. Thanks!
share I don't know how historically accurate this film is, but I caught it yesterday on TCM, and I thought it was pretty well done. There's quite a lot of good action footage, and a likeable romantic triangle involving John Wayne, Dennis O'Keefe and Susan Hayward. William Frawley (I Love Lucy's Fred Mertz) is in this one too, although he looks a little old to be going through basic training.
All in all, though, I'd say you should check this out when you get a chance. Ray
The movie is very fictionalized, but is generally correct in the historical aspects of the creation of the US Navy's Construction Battalions. During WWII, the island-hopping campaign in the Pacific required building airstrips on various islands. During the first year, the military tried using civilian contractors, but then realized this was not a good idea because of exposure to fire but without lawful right to fire back.
So the Seabees were formed. Since the war had been on for a little more than a year, most "able-bodied" men had already been drafted or had enlisted. This left those who had not yet been drafted, those who were older, and those physically unfit for military service. The original SeaBees were those who already had construction experience but who were either older than typical or were yet to be drafted. At that time, the Navy offered no construction training, so only those with real construction experience were needed, and so someone "Fred Mertz's" age was not that uncommon. In fact, the average age of a SeaBee during WWII was about 40.
The Navy soon started offering "A-School" construction training to recruits that met the aptitude tests. The SeaBees continue to this day, having played vital roles in Korea, Vietnam, Panama, the first Gulf War, and the current Iraq and Afghanistan engagements. In Korea and Vietnam, SeaBees landed with front-line troops.
Generally, as in the original days of the SeaBees, the battalions have a primary mission of construction, with a secondary mission of protecting their work sites from enemy combatants. SeaBee Battalions average around 650 men and women, arranged in military formation (companies, squads, fireteams), with an M-16 as standard issue for enlisted personnel, and wear camoflauge appropriate to the terrain. Considered a combat unit, SeaBee battalions were only men until 1994, at which time women were integrated into the deployable combat units.
SeaBee battalions are usually assigned to support Marine units, providing various support ranging from rapidly building runways capable of landing jet aircraft and helocopters, repairing damaged runways, providing temporary battlefield housing, and building general facilities. SeaBees have been involved in constuction missions during the Croatian conflict, Somalia, and both gulf wars.
The SeaBees have also served in many humanitarian missions, using the same skills to provide impoverished nations with schools, housing and communications capabilities. SeaBees have assisted in Haiti, Panama, South Asia and several African countries, and were crucial to the Cuban/Haitian refugee crisis in 1994-1995,earning various commendations from the US government and the UN, including the Humanitarian Service Medal (HumDu).
Currently, SeaBees are serving in hostile theaters in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as in many humanitarian roles around the world.
Constructimus Battimus (we build, we fight)
[I was a Seabee from 1990-1996 active duty and reserve in NMCB-5 and NMCB-22 (NMCB= Naval Mobile Construction Battalion).
(On a side note, I believe wholeheartedly in the work of the SeaBees, but not in the decision-making of our current military leaders.)
I just love this movie! My husband is an older construction guy and it really helps point out the valuable contribution anyone can make to a cause. We cheer when these guys do their jobs under fire and fight back using the tools my husband uses every day. My favorite line from any movie isn't "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn", it's "That'll teach 'em not to monkey with contruction men!" - John Wayne, "The Fighting Seabees".
shareWARNING: SPOILERS
This movie became a classic for kids to see back when there was no TV and we went to the local film theater on Saturday mornings to see two features surrounded by 6-8 cartoons, a newsreel, sometimes a comic live-action short, and a serial. All for 50 cents. And we were there for about three and a half hours. The two features were often John Wayne films many of which were older ones, many, like this, from the 1940s. I remember that they showed The Fighting Seabees along with The Wake Of The Red Witch (as a kid before proper F/X, Wayne drowning in his diver's costume and the fight with the octopus - deeply cheesy - was the height of cinematic cool) by the same director who also gave us The Big Wheel, a terrific Mickey Rooney B movie when Rooney was struggling through the difficult transition years from kid star to twentysomething anti-hero. It's a bout car racing. Cheesy as hell, but if you have never seen Rooney in this period of his career you really should see this one. There is also a roller derby movie he was in. Same plot.
How can I transmit the feelings of those days, more importantly, of being a 10-year old in those days, the Fifties. Before a lot of things we have now. No one worried about their kids going into town (unless it was in a large city and even then, only a few areas), we left in the morning and came back when it started getting dark. No cell phones, no need to call mommy unless we were going to be late. We could do the entire day on less than 4 bucks including eating lunch at the Owl and Rexall Drug Store counter where people still ate chicken a la king and chipped beef on toast and welsh "rabbit". Comic books were ten cents. Phone calls a nickle. You have to feel what it was like to just be alive then, in this country.
So...picture yourselves at 10 or 11, mid-1950s, bicycling with your pals to the Bugs Bunny Show and seeing this film. Think a moment about the cars on the streets, the clothes, none of which we found in the least unusual, of course, but it might add to the moment if you can do that... We were still full of patriotic fervor (we still played Marines vs. the Japs on the playground when we were smaller), and we loved being Wayne. In The Sands Of Iwo Jima, I think, Wayne's character dies after a successful defense of their island, squatting down with his buds having a smoke (I think that is the way he dies in that one), but here the battle is still hanging in the balance, and Wayne was in his caterpillar successfully protecting the airstrip or whatever it is he was doing. The timing of the hit. We know he's gonna bite it, but it was cool because for whatever reason, we never expected Wayne to die (there was plenty of foreshadowing about the snipers, but I never thought for a minute they would or could get Wayne. Sure, they got a bunch of the Seabees, but Wedge Donovan? No way). Wow! Remember how innocent we were, what era that was. It was a big cinema moment for me. Imagine me now remembering it, 50 years later, not having seen it in all those intervening years. The death scene and some of the tractor and construction stuff is all I remember. (I imagine the girls might remember Wayne being the only guy with his shirt open all the time, or so it seemed. The only way I remember is because it's on TV as I write this).
If you can see this in the context of time, in fact any of these old propaganda films from the Forties, it might make them more enjoyable. All was naivete. We didn't have a clue. We weren't cynical about movies and movie stars yet. There was no Paris Hilton. There was no Internet with porn on it. We just ate them up. They were popcorn sellers, these films. And remember also, these were in what would be "rerun" today as they were all ten years old and more when we saw them still in the theaters. It was a fact that within a couple of years and all these old movies would be on television. But at that time we got to see them on the big screen. What a good deal!