First, the bad part: Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came? goes in too many directions at the same time, each direction with its own incompatible tone. First, there's the "make peace with the locals" theme, wherein the Army and the townies fail to get along in two meetings and an icebreaking dance. Don Ameche is wasted as the head military man, cast probably for his then-reputation as an un-special movie star. He'd be brilliantly used in his 80s career comeback. Bradford Dillman's disaffected radar instructor is a fumbled character clearly placed to provide new-Army contrast with the old-school Brian Keith. Their drunken midnight run of the obstacle course is an okay scene idea lost to uninspired direction and the lack of a real payoff.

Lack of payoff is the film's recurring problem. Suzanne Pleshette's saucy barmaid has three or four good tease scenes with Tony Curtis and then drops out of the movie like a hot potato. Her absence at the conclusion prompts the suspicion that she just got sick of the job and ditched for a better gig. Either that or there was once a different and more sobering ending that got jettisoned by worried producers.

Brian Keith is written into a tough corner; his big character change is when he decides to chuck his career out the window and charge into town in a tank to rescue his buddy Tony Curtis. But the groundwork for his decision is insufficient. He never seems drunk enough or disgusted enough to do such a destructive thing. I wonder if the film could possibly have been meant to have a conclusion where Keith and Ivan Dixon's Sgt. Jones are killed by the townspeople. That seems completely out of whack, but Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came? has the smell of a movie that had its intention and tone diverted in mid-course. A lot of "serious" material remains.

The good parts of the movie are the detail scenes. Sgt. Jones gets told nicely that he can't get a loan by a banker (Arthur O'Connell, wasted) who admits that the city fathers have rigged the system so no soldier black or white can buy town property. And Jones has to admit that the problem is bigger than race discrimination. (He gets a dose of that from a black MP, of all things.) There are good scenes of soldiers sticking up for each other, as when a Green Beret resists provocation from the sheriff and the abusive Tony Curtis. And a teenage dance turns out to be off limits to soldiers, even when the few who show up are teenagers themselves. The soldiers have little choice but to hang around bars or search out the local brothel.

Re-channeling his stockade sergeant from From Here to Eternity, Ernest Borgnine nails his trite redneck sheriff character, threatening recruits who spit on the sidewalk and relishing every opportunity to bust one of our rebel heroes. Borgnine's character as written has no depth, a complaint which goes for all but a few top roles. We're set up for a racial confrontation that doesn't happen, and we expect Tony Curtis to be beaten almost to death but that doesn't happen either. Curtis has a couple of excellent verbal foreplay scenes with Pleshette, who knows just how to tease him about his middle-aged paunch. Their entire subplot gets squelched when it comes time for the tank to start rolling. Curtis's rebellious streak never gels either.

I'm not proud to say that at age eighteen I thought the tank scenes were great. Comedy destruction was big in the 60s because realistic car stunts and real destruction was a rare occurrence in movies, even the crushing of the repainted used cars seen here. With all the irreverence toward the Army, it's a wonder that cooperation was extended to Suppose. Perhaps the present system of vetting scripts to see if they favored the Armed Forces didn't happen until later in the 70s. On the other hand, perhaps the script the Army saw was more serious ... some parts of the finished film are very sympathetic to Army problems.

The casting is lazy, with perennial slimeball Robert Emhardt as the mayor, and whiney John Fielder (The Odd Couple) as an Army underling who finally takes charge as if directed to emulate M*A*S*H's Radar O'Reilly. Grady Sutton is almost invisible as a dodo parson and Christopher Mitchum makes no impact as a green recruit who sleeps through Bradford Dillman's radar class. Poor Dillman looks particularly lost, saddled with an unwritten character.

The pace stays lively, although the direction is unusually lazy. The dances are laced with closeups of wiggling teens looking like they wandered in from television. The second unit's work with the highway demolition derby isn't bad, but it's not integrated well with the character footage. The town is the same Warner/TBS lot seen in everything from Bye Bye Birdie to The Chase, with the wild west street redressed to look more modern. Note, however that some of the town streets are paved and others aren't.

Vietnam is mentioned only in passing. None of the soldiers is concerned, almost as if the script had been written as a service comedy set completely in peacetime. Brian Keith does mention having served as a Vietnam observer in 1956, though.

Although there's no nudity we can tell that everyone's eager to demonstrate how much bad language can sneak through and still receive a PG rating. Ivan Dixon keeps his dignity intact considering the racial epithets that are tossed at him, mostly by his 'good buddy' Tony Curtis. Actor Dixon had it all worked out, however; in three years he produced and directed his own film, the notorious The Spook Who Sat by the Door about a token black CIA agent who gets career-sidelines as a token receptionist. He quits to organize a Panther-like militant group along similar lines. The movie almost never gets shown, and I hear it's strong stuff.

MGM/ABC's DVD of Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came? is a surprise; it's 16:9 enhanced and nicely framed throughout. Colors are a little blah, especially skin tones. There are no extras, not even a trailer.

Audio is fine, but those looking for an interesting Jerry Fielding soundtrack need not make the effort; it's not his finest hour by a longshot. The cover collage does a good job of making the film seem like a screwball comedy in the vein of The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,
Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came? rates:
Movie: Fair ++
Video: Good
Sound: Good
Supplements: none
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: August 17, 2004