Battle Hymn ***½ (1957, Rock Hudson, Martha Hyer, Dan Duryea, Anna Kashfi, Don DeFore, Jock Mahoney, Alan Hale Jr) – Classic Movie Review 6,670

Douglas Sirk’s lavish, sentimental, flag-waving 1957 American war film stars Rock Hudson as Lt Colonel Dean Hess, a real-life US fighter pilot in the Korean War who helped to evacuate hundreds of war orphans to safety.

Director Douglas Sirk’s lavish, sentimental, flag-waving 1957 Korean War movie stars his regular actor Rock Hudson, who impresses in a heavyweight role as Lt Colonel Dean Hess, a real-life World War Two bomber pilot and flying chaplain who later is involved in the Korean War. Patriotic it may seem to be, but it can also be seen in another kinder light as it won the 1957 Golden Globe for Best Film Promoting International Understanding.

The remorseful Colonel Hess enters the ministry to atone for bombing a German orphanage, but afterwards decides that he is a failure as a minister and rejoins the air force to train young pilots for the Korean War and goes back to Korea to help the orphans there and sets up an orphanage.

The stalwart and well-meaning, if uncomplicated and episodic screenplay by Charles Grayson and Vincent B Evans, based on the 1956 autobiography of Dean Hess, overcomes most of the problems of a carving out a script based on a real-life story.

In star support, Martha Hyer impresses as Mary Hess and Dan Duryea is especially good as Sergeant Herman.

It is shot in CinemaScope and in Technicolor by Russell Metty.

Also in the cast are Anna Kashfi as En Soon Yang, Don DeFore as Capt. Dan Skidmore, Jock Mahoney as Major Moore, Alan Hale Jr as Mess Sergeant, James Edwards as Lt Maples, Carl Benton Reid as Deacon Edwards, Philip Ahn  as Lun-Wa, Bartlett Robinson as Gen. Timberidge, Simon Scott as Lt Hollis, Carleton Young as Maj. Harrison, Jung Kyoo Pyo as Chu, James Hong as Maj. Chong, Teru Shimada as Korean Official, Ralph Ahn as Lt Park, Amzie Strickland as Mrs Peterson, and General Earle E Partridge as himself.

Richard Loo’s scenes as a character based on ROK Air Force chief General Kim Chung-yul were deleted from the film though he is still listed in the credits.

Dean Hess was technical advisor to try to ensure that the film did not stray too far from his autobiography. Nonetheless, it is a typical Hollywood screenplay of its era, taking significant liberties in depicting the life and wartime activities of Hess and his colleagues.

Hess donated his profits from the film and his autobiography to the orphanages he helped to establish.

Hess vetoed the Universal’s first choice of Robert Mitchum to play him, given the actor’s bad boy character.

Universal were unable to shoot in Korea, and instead filmed in Nogales, Arizona, with similar landscapes.

The director of the Orphans Home of Korea, On Soon Whang, came to the US with 25 orphans who play themselves in the movie,

Battle Hymn is directed by Douglas Sirk, runs 108 minutes, is made and released by Universal Pictures, is written by Charles Grayson and Vincent B Evans, based on the autobiography of Dean Hess, is shot in CinemaScope and in Technicolor by Russell Metty, produced by Ross Hunter, scored by Frank Skinner and designed by Alexander Golitzen.

Release date: February 14, 1957.

Around 25,000 fans came to see Rock Hudson and the other stars when Battle Hymn premiered on February 12, 1957, at the Colony Cinema (now the Peoples Bank Theatre), in Marietta, Ohio, where Dean Hess was born.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6,670

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