The Gallant Hours

James Cagney and Ward Costello

Robert Montgomery's The Gallant Hours is a peculiar mix of docudrama and hagiography. The picture illustrates Admiral Bull Halsey's leadership during World War 2's Guadalcanal campaign. The film is bookended by scenes of Halsey's retirement from service. The limited scope of this feature is a kindness to Halsey whose personal life and naval career were far more checkered than this flick lets on. Halsey in the film is a salt of the earth mensch, his door always open to the plaints of a troubled junior officer or swabie. James Cagney, in a role that is tailor made for him, holds together this rather static flick. There is an attempt to parallel Halsey's strategizing with that of his opponent, the Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. This film does a reasonably good job of humanizing the enemy for an American film from 1960.  However, Yamamoto's death, which serves as the ambivalent climax of this film, occurred five months after the end of the Guadalcanal campaign. There are a few other inaccuracies because when you do a hagiography there has to be a little hogwash.

The documentary aspect of the script, by Frank D. Gilroy and Air Force veteran Beirne Lay Jr., uses extensive narration to outline, poorly, the strategy of the campaign. What works better is an effort to humanize the characters by offering details about individual's make-up and ultimate fate. The narration, alternated by Montgomery and Art Gilmore, is compelling when offering us such tidbits as Yamamoto's passion for poker and that one character ends up Governor of South Dakota and another a paraplegic. Would that Montgomery's visual approach had been half as interesting. Instead, the approach is torpid and seems chintzy. This was a film produced by Montgomery and Cagney, so there seems to have been more attention to cutting corners than usual. Most of the camera set-ups are primitive and there are no battle scenes in this war movie. It is an actor's movie of the war.

Now that may not have been such a bad idea with one of the greatest actors of the century in the lead. Cagney underplays, the mythos of the role preceding him, and captures an exemplary senior officer who displays more charm than the real Halsey did. Cagney's deft touch is best seen in the moment he hears of Yamamoto's death. While his comrades are celebrating, Halsey seems aggrieved. Earlier in the film, Halsey had narrowly escaped a similar fate as that of his opponent. We can see what Halsey is thinking in Cagney's eyes: there, but for the grace of God, go I. I also enjoyed the scenes of Cagney interacting with faces that would become increasing familiar in the future: Dennis Weaver, Richard Jaeckel, and William Schallert. I don't really like The Gallant Hours as a film, but admire Montgomery for providing moments of dignity for those who gave all. A large portion of the cast of this film served in the war. Some, like Montgomery and Ward Costello, were genuine heroes.