The Fighting 69th | |
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Directed by | William Keighley |
Written by | Norman Reilly Raine Fred Niblo, Jr. Dean Riesner |
Produced by | Louis F. Edelman Hal B. Wallis |
Starring | James Cagney Pat O'Brien George Brent Dennis Morgan Alan Hale, Sr. |
Cinematography | Tony Gaudio |
Edited by | Owen Marks |
Music by | Adolph Deutsch |
Color process | Black and white |
Production company | Warner Bros. |
Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
Release date |
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Running time | 90 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $2,313,000 [1] |
The Fighting 69th is a 1940 American war film starring James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, and George Brent. The plot is based upon the actual exploits of New York City's 69th Infantry Regiment during World War I. The regiment was given that nickname when opposing General Robert E. Lee during the American Civil War.
Real people portrayed in The Fighting 69th include Father Francis P. Duffy, the chaplain; battalion commander and future OSS leader "Wild Bill" Donovan; Lt. Oliver Ames, a platoon commander; and then-Sgt. Joyce Kilmer (Jeffrey Lynn), a famous poet, who was killed in battle on July 30, 1918. [2]
Most of The Fighting 69th was filmed at Warner Brothers' Calabasas Ranch location, which served as Camp Mills, the regiment's training base, various French villages, and numerous battlefields. [3]
The plot centers on misfit Jerry Plunkett (James Cagney), a tough-talking New Yorker who displays a mixture of bravado and disrespect for officers. Caught up in patriotic fervor when the United States enters WWI, he joins the 69th with aim of winning medals by singlehandedly defeating the Germans.
However, Plunkett's inexperience and disrespect for command lead to him making errors in battle and eventually show him to be a coward. The chaplain, Father Francis P. Duffy (Pat O'Brien) believes there to be something more in the young man and begs the 69th's commanding officer Major "Wild Bill" Donovan (George Brent) to give Plunkett one more chance. Donovan reluctantly agrees and when the 69th is ordered to send a squad into no man's land to capture German soldiers for intel, Donovan orders Plunkett to join them.
Plunkett's inexperience and nervousness lead to him accidentally disclosing the squad's position and leads to the deaths of two well respected soldiers Lieutenant "Long John" Wynn (Dick Foran) and Private Timothy "Timmy" Wynn (William Lundigan). Donovan is outraged and ultimately orders Plunkett to be court-martialed. However, while he is awaiting execution, Fr Duffy approaches Plunkett in one last attempt to save him spiritually. Plunkett begs the priest to release him so he can desert the army and escape the war. Fr Duffy declines his request and when his jail cell is destroyed by a German shell and he is freed, Plunkett witnesses Father Duffy ministering to several wounded troops, urging them to keep their faith and have courage.
Shamed and inspired by Donovan's forbearance and courage, Plunkett decides to rejoin his unit at the front and support their advance. However, when he catches up with the 69th he spots that the battalion has been stopped by a fierce German bombardment. Coming across a mortar whose crew have almost all been killed, he finds Sgt. "Big Mike" Wynn and implores the older man to tell him how to operate the mortar. Sgt. Wynn initially refuses as he recalls how Plunkett had caused the death of his two brothers in an earlier encounter with the enemy.
Plunkett though perseveres and starts to use the mortar to counter the German bombardment and allow the 69th to push ahead with the advance. The Germans though counter and throw a grenade into the trench where Plunkett and Sgt. Wynn are. In one desperate act of heroism he sacrifices his life by diving on the grenade in a bid to protect "Big Mike". Plunkett is mortally wounded and succumbs to his wounds leaving Major Donovan and Sgt Wynn in shock at the young man's true bravery.
While Jerry Plunkett was a fictional character, Father Duffy, Major Donovan, Lt. Ames, and poet Joyce Kilmer were all real members of the 69th. Many of the events depicted (training at Camp Mills, the Mud March, dugout collapse at Rouge Bouquet, crossing the Ourcq River, Victory Parade, etc.) actually happened.
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John T. Prout, an Irish American who was a former Captain in the regiment and a general in the Irish Army, was the movie's "technical advisor". [4] [5]
Priscilla Lane was initially cast as one of the soldiers' girls back home, but the part was cut prior to production. No female characters are seen in the film.
According to Warner Bros. records, the film made $1,822,000 domestically and $491,000 foreign, for a worldwide total of $2,313,000. [1]
James Francis Cagney Jr. was an American actor and dancer. On stage and in film, he was known for his consistently energetic performances, distinctive vocal style, and deadpan comic timing. He won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances.
Alfred Joyce Kilmer was an American writer and poet mainly remembered for a short poem titled "Trees" (1913), which was published in the collection Trees and Other Poems in 1914. Though a prolific poet whose works celebrated the common beauty of the natural world as well as his Catholic faith, Kilmer was also a journalist, literary critic, lecturer, and editor. At the time of his deployment to Europe during World War I, Kilmer was considered the leading American Catholic poet and lecturer of his generation, whom critics often compared to British contemporaries G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) and Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953). He enlisted in the New York National Guard and was deployed to France with the 69th Infantry Regiment in 1917. He was killed by a sniper's bullet at the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918 at the age of 31. He was married to Aline Murray, also an accomplished poet and author, with whom he had five children.
William Joseph "Wild Bill" Donovan was an American soldier, lawyer, intelligence officer and diplomat. He is best known for serving as the head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), during World War II. He is regarded as the founding father of the CIA, and a statue of him stands in the lobby of the CIA headquarters building in Langley, Virginia.
Jeffrey Lynn was an American stage-screen actor and film producer who worked primarily through the Golden Age of Hollywood establishing himself as one of the premier talents of his time. Throughout his acting career, both on stage and in film, he was typecast as "the attractive, reliable love interest of the heroine," or "the tall, stalwart hero."
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The 69th Infantry Regiment is an infantry regiment of the United States Army. It is from New York City, part of the New York Army National Guard. It is known as the "Fighting Sixty-Ninth", a name said to have been given by Robert E. Lee during the Civil War. An Irish-American heritage is attributed to the regiment, which is also nicknamed the "Fighting Irish" – a tradition mentioned in Joyce Kilmer's poem "When the 69th Comes Back". Between 1917 and 1992 it was also designated the 165th Infantry Regiment. It is headquartered at the 69th Regiment Armory in Manhattan.
Francis Patrick Duffy was a Canadian American soldier, Catholic priest and military chaplain.
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"Rouge Bouquet" or "The Wood Called Rouge Bouquet" is a lyric poem written in 1918 by American poet, essayist, critic and soldier Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918). The poem commemorates an intense German artillery bombardment of an American trench position in the Rouge Bouquet wood near the French village of Baccarat on 7 March 1918 that resulted in the loss of 19 American soldiers with the 165th Infantry Regiment, of 42nd Rainbow Division.
Rouge Bouquet is a part of the Forêt de Parroy near the village of Baccarat, France. It was the site of a German artillery bombardment of American trench positions on 7 March 1918 at 15:20 on the Chausailles sector of the Western Front during World War I. The bombardment resulted in the burial of 21 men of the 165th Infantry Regiment, 42nd Rainbow Division of whom only a few survived. The 22 men, including their platoon commander 1st Lieutenant John Norman, were assembled in a dugout when a German artillery shell landed on the roof of the dugout. Major William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan quickly began a rescue attempt to dig the men out, but the effort were hampered by mud-slides and continued enemy shelling. Two men were rescued and five dead were recovered before efforts had to be halted. The voices of other men could be heard for a while, but the remaining fifteen men died before rescue efforts could resume. Donovan was awarded the French Croix de Guerre for his actions during the attempted rescue.
Emmett St. Clair Watson, Jr. was an American illustrator whose works appeared in popular magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Judge, Collier's, and Life, and also in pulp magazines such as Argosy, Railroad Stories, and Detective Fiction Weekly.