UP FRONT served up the hi-jinks of US Army “dogfaces” ‘Willie & Joe’, a pair of GI footsloggers made famous during WW2 by cartoonist Bill Mauldin, whose 1945 collection of their combat-coping attitudes and antics became a huge bestseller in 1945, winning 23-year-old Mauldin the first of two Pulitzer Prizes. He did not care for this 1951 movie scavenged from his work, and it is pretty weak, held together only by the comic aptitude of its two stars.

On the Italian Front, veteran infantrymen and close buddies ‘Joe’ (David Wayne) and ‘Willie’ (Tom Ewell) make it thru the muck, mire and misery of combat not just with skill and luck but by deploying cynical takes on the whole crazy show. When Joe is slightly wounded and sent to Naples to recover, Willie seeks him out. ‘On the town’, they try to evade the military police while enjoying a respite from battle. Joe falls for sweet local ‘Emi Rosso’ (Marina Berti, touching and lovely in the same year’s colossal Quo Vadis).

Directed by Alexander Hall (Here Comes Mr. Jordan), with a script pilfered from Mauldin’s 240-page book. Stanley Roberts adapted it and got on-screen credit but there were contributions from five others, including Ring Lardner Jr.  The public fondness for the characters ensured a take of $5,600,000, a respectable 51st on the earner tally. That was enough to light a sequel the following year, Back At The Front, with Wayne replaced by Harvey Lembeck and the guys called back to serve in postwar occupied Japan. Lame stuff, that one only reached 106th in ’52. There are a few chuckles in Up Front; Wayne and Ewell make a good team: too bad the movie wasn’t better. There was a serious WW2 movie set in Italy that year,  Force Of Arms, with William Holden. It makes for an interesting contrast with this goldbricker.

92 minutes, augmented with many familiar faces filling out the ranks: Jeffrey Lynn, Richard Egan, Vaughan Taylor, Hal Baylor, John Doucette, Kenneth Tobey, Vito Scotti, Peter Graves, James Flavin, Frank DeKova, Harry Guardino, Gregg Palmer and Pat Carroll.

Why We Fight—Marina Berti, 1924-2002