Just saw Hellcats on TCM for the very first time!
All in all, I thought it was good. Silly as Patti Davis thought? Sure, but it was likable as well. (And Patti, if you are reading this, I saw this alone and not with someone else! ).
Watching a submarine movie where the two senior officers were at odds, reminded me a lot of RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP with Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster and even the sci-fi VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA with Walter Pidgeon and Robert Sterling. But then I realized that HELLCATS actually predated both films!
Truth be told, I’ve only seen one other Ronald Reagan film, THE WINNING TEAM, where he played St. Louis Cardinal pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander, and he wasn’t bad in that one.
Of course, HELLCATS is famous for starring Ron and Nancy Reagan, in their only feature together. Here, Reagan plays the square-jawed, no-nonsense captain, but he is really not a tyrant to his crew, although some may see him as that (refusing to pick up one of his divers at sea when a Japanese destroyer was quickly approaching their sub, etc.). In the end, if the part had called for what Reagan portrayed, then he did a solid job. Nancy, I thought, really didn’t have much to do here except to converse and comfort her man. Watching the beginning, I thought this was going have a love-triangle story, but that quickly changed.
For all of the talk about Ron and Nancy, I thought the movie ultimately belonged to Arthur Franz, as Reagan’s second-in-command, and in many ways, the film is really looking at it from his point-of-view. Franz chastising his captain for making questionable decisions, then ultimately having to make those tough decisions himself was quite predictable, but Franz made it work anyway (he grew up as Captain Reagan would note).
The special effects I thought were pretty good, although I have this feeling some of it was taken from other pictures. Certainly, the scene where a sea rescue plane is searching for survivors of Reagan’s sub, and ultimately spots them…..I could have sworn I saw that before! And yes I did! That clip was taken from IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA. Tricky Charles Schneer for inserting a scene from one of his earlier pictures and hoping that no one would notice. But, hey, this movie nerd did! (Pounds his chests!).
It is interesting to see war movies like HELLCATS, RUN SILENT RUN DEEP, and even HEAVEN KNOWS MR. ALLISON, during this period where Hollywood had to walk that certain fine line. By the late 1950s, Japan was one of the big, if not the biggest foreign market for Hollywood. While HELLCATS had the Japanese as the enemies, it never really stereotyped them or smacked of racism, like we would have seen had this movie been filmed during the war itself (GUADALCANAL DIARY comes to mind).
Some other notable tibits:
You had Admiral Nimitz introducing the film. It probably would have been equally interesting to have him playing himself during the strategy scenes later on in the movie (which was ultimately played by Selmer Jackson).
We see Thomas Browne Henry as the Board of Inquiry Chief. I guess when he was doing these movies for Charles Schneer, it was probably stipulated in his contract that he play a military figure!
While Ronald Reagan played a submarine navy captain, his predecessor, Jimmy Carter was actually in the U.S. Navy and on submarines from WWII to the early 50s.