Let's play a game!

I'm curious if it was pure fiction or historical fiction?

Not much info to be found on my guvment computer... (internet limited)

 

are war movies allowed to be watched in Oregon these days?

 

Still your turn @TacoGlenn

I doubt any of us would have guessed that within a few hours. Next time keep posting more clues and one of us might be able to answer it.

 

I think Glenn is busy... FREE TURN anyone.

 

ok, I'll go...

 

Regular Pepsi vs. Diet Pepsi?

 

Tora tora tora?

 

Nope

 

Tuskegee Airmen?

 

Wrong war, plus the Tuskegee Airmen was made for TV, iirc

 

Screen: All the Cliches; 'Battle Hymn' Is Usual Film About Service
By BOSLEY CROWTHER
Published: February 16, 1957


PERHAPS the most candid comment to be made about Universal's "Battle Hymn" is also the most propitious, so far as its box-office chances are concerned. That is to say, it is conventional. It follows religiously the line of mingled piety and pugnacity laid down for standard idealistic service films. What's more, it has Rock Hudson playing the big hero role. And it is in CinemaScope and color. Wrap them up and what have you got? The popular thing.

In telling the so-called real-life story of Air Force Colonel Dean Hess, the "flying parson" who mingled aerial fighting and caring for orphans during the Korean war, this picture, now at the Capitol, doesn't miss a single cliché as it makes a calculated circuit of the old militant sky-pilot plot.

You know exactly what's coming the moment Parson Hess tells his wife, "I'm not cut out to be a minister" and re-enlists as an Air Force officer for the Korean war. You know he's going to find himself placed in a cheerless spot near the battlefront, with an old World War II buddy who calls him "Killer," while he himself is struggling with his conscience on just that point.

And then you can guess what's to follow when the first starving refugee child is caught stealing scraps from the cook-tent while Thanksgiving dinner is being eaten by the men. You can scan the compassion of the colonel, which his men at first ridicule, and then the setting up of a front-line orphanage in collaboration with a beautiful Korean girl. You may, if you're slightly clairvoyant, even see that this girl must be killed (because she's fallen in love with the colonel, who is married), and then anticipate the final evacuation of the children by means of a heroic airlift called "Operation Kiddie Kar."

Along the way, when the colonel expresses the wish that he had some candy for the kids, where does his humorous, enterprising top sergeant get it? He steals it from the Navy, of course. And when he and his old World War buddy go on a mission to destroy some enemy tanks, which one gets hit? Who steers him home to the airfield? Who holds his hand and talks about death being "a wonderful step from darkness to light" as he dies?

It is of such scenes that Charles Grayson and Vincent B. Evans have constructed their script, and it is in the most obvious, mawkish fashion that Douglas Sirk has directed it. Mr. Hudson is stalwart as the hero, Don Defore is bumptious as his friend, Dan Duryea is broad as the top sergeant and Anna Kashfi is porcelain-like as the Korean girl. Philip Ahn wears a beard and antique headdress as an ancient philosopher and James Edwards plays a Negro lieutenant who sings "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" as a lullaby.

It is noticeable that the starving orphans are remarkably neat and plump. But that shouldn't affect the popularity of the picture. They are also disarmingly cute. So are most of the contrivances of this thoroughly harmonious "Battle Hymn."


The Cast
BATTLE HYMN, screen play by Charles Grayson and Vincent B. Evans; directed by Douglas Sirk and produced by Ross Hunter for Universal-International. At the Capitol.
Dean Hess . . . . . Rock Hudson
En Soon Yang . . . . . Anna Kashfi
Sergeant Herman . . . . . Dan Duryea
Captain Skidmore . . . . . Don Defore
Mary Hess . . . . . Martha Hyer
Major Moore . . . . . Jock Mahoney
Mess Sergeant . . . . . Alan Hale
Lieutenant Maples . . . . . James Edwards
Deacon Edwards . . . . . Carl Benton Reid
General Kim . . . . . Richard Loo
Old Man . . . . . Philip Ahn





Stars and Stripes, 20 Dec 1965 Korea

HISTORIC AIRLIFT RECALLED

900 Orphans Saved From Reds

By 1st Lt. James F. Wilman, S&S Korea Bureau

SEOUL - Fifteen years have passed since more than 900 South Korean orphans were airlifted to sanctuary on Cheju Island in "Operation Kiddy Car," but the work started then by a now-legendary American clergyman fighter pilot continues today. Mrs. On Soon Whang, director of the Orphans Home of Korea, who continues this work, still recalls Dec. 20, 1950, for it was a very eventful day in her life.

On this day Air Force Lt. Col. Dean E. Hess, a Republic of Korea Air Force adviser, got Gen. Earle Partridge, Fifth Air Force commander in Japan, to evacuate the orphans from Kimpo airfield outside Seoul, after they had been transported there from Inchon, where they had waited for boats that never came. During this time, communist forces were approaching Seoul down the Uijongbu Corridor, a historic invasion route, and the capital city was in danger of capture.

So it was with some relief that Col. Hess and his associates saw the C-54s wing in over Kimpo and take the waifs to Cheju Island, where Mrs. Whang ran an orphanage in an abandoned school. Today the Orphans Home of Korea, now relocated near the Korean Military Academy, outside Seoul, is still home to 68 of the original group. These children were infants at the time of the flight to Cheju Island. The oldest of these is now 17. The home presently has 250 orphans.

The Seoul orphanage site was given to the home by Americans. Mrs. Whang said, "Col. Hess and many American friends sent money, and with it we have bought this land."

Members of the (Thunderbird) Division of the Oklahoma National Guard, which was in Korea during the war, collected $50,000 and gave it to the orphanage. This money greatly helped the construction program at the new Seoul location.

Buildings at the orphanage include a girl's dormitory, boy's cottage, a chapel, mess hall, noodle factory, food preparation areas, and a vocational training school. But as Mrs. Whang pointed out, the vocational training school, built three years ago, stands unused due to lack of money to buy equipment.

In order to get the school into operation, Mrs. Whang said that she needed 50 typewriters, 50 sewing machines, barber equipment, milk processing equipment and 350 chairs for the children. Also needed are the funds to pay two teachers.

Presently the orphanage gets $5 and in the near future will get $6 a month per child from the Christian Children's Fund. Mrs. Whang said that the orphanage also gets some help from the South Korean government and other agencies. The orphans go to school regularly. Kindergarten is held for 44 at the home, and 96 go to local schools in the area daily. Middle school students are taught at the orphanage two hours a day.

The children feed the cows, pigs, and chickens, and also help in preparing the food at the orphanage. "Everyone has to do something," Mrs. Whang said. She pointed out with some pride that she has seen 22 of her girl orphans married and said that she had assisted them in wedding preparations.

None of the original 68 orphans remembered Col. Hess from the dark days of 1950, because they were too young, but all of them have met the Protestant clergyman turned fighter pilot. Now a full colonel, Hess is assigned as Director of Advertising and Publicity at Randolph AFB, Texas. He was assigned as Fifth Air Force Information Officer prior to this. Hess has adopted one of the orphans a girl named Marilyn, age nine.





Free turn, someone else go...