MovieChat Forums > The Long Gray Line (1955) Discussion > The Class of 1936

The Class of 1936

posted 8 years ago by Cairo-5
3 replies | jump to latest

According to the Goofs section:

One of the big scenes in the film is when Marty’s firstborn son dies. Marty and Mary Maher never had any children, stillborn or otherwise. The baby’s death was Hollywood fiction.

Since this was fiction the scene could be crafted as the director wished. In this case the baby was a boy and during his brief life Marty and the cadets envisioned that he would become a cadet himself in the West Point Class of 1936.

My guess is that since the birth takes place prior to the graduation of the Class of 1915 the projected year of 1936 was simply picked as a reasonable future date, with no other intended implications. But whether intended or not that choice opens up some interesting lines of thought.

If the fictional Martin Maher III had survived and entered West Point as envisioned that would have placed him in the historical class with William Westmoreland, Creighton Abrams and Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. That means he would have participated in the despicable “silencing” of Davis for the entirety of their four years at West Point. And this would inevitably have been done with the full knowledge and acceptance of his father. Not something that would have reflected credit on either of them.

And that points to an obvious omission from the story. There is a brief tip of the hat to Vicente P. Lim, the first cadet from the Philippines, but no mention at all of Davis, the first black cadet to graduate from West Point in the 20th Century. And certainly no mention of the disgraceful way he was treated. This was easy to ignore. The story skips from the infancy of Red, Jr. shortly after World War I to the beginning of his Plebe year, presumably in the summer of 1938 since it appears that at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack (Dec. 1941) Red is a First Classman and soon to graduate (Jun. 1942).

So the entire Davis period is bypassed. Of course the intent of the movie makers was to honor the life of the historical Marty Maher and to show West Point at its best. It would not have fit that narrative to discuss the Davis situation. But there was nothing fictional about how Davis was treated. It really happened. And that raises the question. What did the real Marty Maher think about that shameful episode in West Point history?

***
It's easier to be an individual than a god.

[–] MadTom 8 years ago

As you yourself point out, the story jumps from Kitty Sundstrom receiving Red Sundstrom Sr.'s posthumous Medal of Honor while Red Jr. is an infant sometime in 1919, ahead 19 years to 1938 with Red Jr. being sworn in with the incoming Class of 1942, so the Class of 1936 had been gone two years. So what? A lot else happened in those 19 years that wasn't shown (like then-Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur becoming the Superintendent and modernizing the curriculum, to include foot-marching the entire Plebe classes about a hundred miles from West Point to Fort Dix, NJ for Basic camp). It's a real convoluted stretch to call this an "obvious omission".

Maybe if this movie would be remade today, they might convolute things to include the silencing of B.O. Davis Jr. for the sake of Political Correctness. But then again, Hollywood probably wouldn't even consider making a movie like this to begin with.

Mad Tom
Major, US Army (Retired)
(An unapologetic ROTC graduate!)

[–] Cairo-5 8 years ago

Difference of opinion. I don't think it's a stretch to consider something when the movie itself opens the door to those thoughts.

When Marty and the group of cadets are celebrating the birth of Marty III and they anticipate he will one day be a cadet himself someone does a quick calculation and concludes that the baby will be a member of the class of 1936. Since that class is specifically named in the movie it's not unreasonable to contemplate what the story might have been like if Marty's son really had lived and fulfilled that hope. And once a person starts thinking about the class of 1936 the whole Benjamin Davis matter becomes unavoidable.

In addition the movie goes out of its way to mention Vicente P. Lim by bumping him from the class of 1914, his actual class--which was not featured, to the class of 1915 so that he could be shown in the 1915 shadow of Lusitania graduation scene. Not that he didn't merit special mention. But what Davis did was no less meritorious and if the movie made special effort to acknowledge Lim by shoe horning him into an event where he wasn't actually present, it's noticeable that nothing was said about Davis--especially since Davis really was a member of a class that had already been referenced.

Certainly a lot of West Point history wasn't covered. It's always been a regret when I watch the movie that the limitations of the story meant that so much of the life of Marty Maher had to be omitted. There was so much history that would have been fascinating if only the movie could have presented it.

Douglas MacArthur as Superintendent. Yes, that would have been interesting. I would also have enjoyed seeing a portrayal of Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. as Commandant of Cadets, if only that had been feasible. Just as a matter of personal interest in the man. But the scope of the movie simply could not cover that much detail and there was nothing in what was presented in the movie that in any way opened the door to special contemplation of those areas of West Point history.

***
It's easier to be an individual than a god.

[–] MadTom 8 years ago

In case you haven't noticed, this is a movie about Marty Maher and not about Benjamin O. Davis Jr., who now has two movies in which he or a fictionalized version of him was a central figure (Tuskeegee Airmen and Red Tails).

They mentioned and showed Vicente P. Lim for all of about 5 seconds, and he didn't even have a speaking role.