Movie Monday: The Story of GI Joe

Movie Monday: The Story of GI Joe

A tribute to the American infantryman in World War II, The Story of GI Joe released eighty years ago last month and is based on the compiled columns of journalist Ernie Pyle. Pyle was best known for his stories about “ordinary soldiers.”

Born August 3, 1900, on a farm in Dana, Indiana, Pyle was an only child who had no interest in following in his parent’s footsteps and running a farm. He opted for, as one source put it, a more adventurous life. Upon his high school graduation, he enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War I, but the war ended before he finished his training. He then entered college where he was editor of the school newspaper. Bitten by the journalistic bug, he headed to Washington, DC where he was hired at the Washington Daily News, part of the Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate for whom he would work his whole career.

He generally penned “human interest type stories,” and when he headed overseas as a war correspondent, he continued in the same vein with his reports from the European and Pacific theaters. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his accounts of infantry soldiers – often referred to as dogface – from the first-person perspective.

The movie stars the up-and-coming actor, Burgess Meredith, as Pyle, who helped with the casting and

insisted, “For God’s sake, don’t let them make me look like a fool.” Other actors were considered for the part, including Leslie Howard, but director William Wellman wanted a physically smaller man to better portray the middle-aged journalist. It took quite a bit of finagling before Meredith, a captain the army, was given an honorable discharge to star in the movie. It was one of his earliest film credits.

Much of the dialogue and narration came the 1943 publication of collected columns called Here is Your War. Nine war correspondents are listed as technical advisers in the film’s credits. The plot follows the untried infantrymen of C Company, 18th Infantry. Lt. Bill Walker (played by Robert Mitchum) allows Pyle to accompany all the way to the front lines of Tunisia and Italy through rain and mud. They take part in the Battle of Kasserine Pass, a “bloody chaotic defeat,” the eventually advance to Monte Cassino where they are stopped and end up hiding out in caves eating cold rations on Christmas day. Some of the men Pyle gets to know are killed, including the lieutenant, and the film ends on a somber note with a fade to black and Pyle narrating the conclusion: “For those beneath the wooden crosses, there is nothing we can do, except perhaps to pause and murmur, ‘Thanks pal, thanks.’”

Two years later, Pyle was killed by enemy fire during the Battle of Okinawa. At the time of his death, his column was published in 400 daily and 300 weekly newspapers nationwide. President Truman later said, “No man in this war has so well told the story of the American fighting man as American fighting men wanted it told. He deserves the gratitude of all his countrymen.”

The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Mitchum’s only career nomination. In 2009, The Story of GI Joe was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically” significant.

Have you seen this classic?

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A Lesson in Love

He thinks he’s too old. She thinks she’s too young. Can these teachers learn that love defies all boundaries?

Born and raised in London, Isobel Turvine knows nothing about farming, but after the students in her school evacuate during Operation Pied Piper, she’s left with little to do. Her friend talks her into joining the Women’s Land Army, and she finds herself working the land at a manor home in Yorkshire that’s been converted to a boys’ school. A teacher at heart, she is drawn to the lads, but the handsome yet stiff-necked headmaster wants her to stick to farming.

Left with an arm that barely works from the last “war to end all wars,” Gavin Emerson agrees to take on the job of headmaster when his school moves from London to Yorkshire, but he’s saddled with the quirky manor owner, bickering among his teachers, and a gaggle of Land Army girls who have turned the grounds into a farm. When the group’s blue-eyed, raven-haired leader nearly runs him down in a car, he admonishes her to stay in the fields, but they are thrown together at every turn. Can he trust her not to break his heart?

Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3YHgUb0

Photo credits:

Movie Poster: By Illustrator unknown. "©1945 by the United Artists Corporation" - Public Domain

Still from The Story of GI Joe:  United Artists Corporation - Public Domain

Ernie Pyle: By Milton J. Pike - United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3b08817. Public Domain