They Were Expendable (1945)
I would be lying if I called this a bad film. From the title I thought perhaps it was, but John Ford turned out to be the director. I haven’t watched any John Ford films all the way through, except for The Quiet Man — my mother’s favourite movie — and They Were Expendable also stars John Wayne — who was my father’s favourite actor — so even though I have never seen this particular film, it still holds memories for me. Because Ford is such a consummate artist, every scene is like the movement of a symphony, rising and falling with an ineluctable grace. The subject of the film (and all of Ford’s films) is masculinity — something that has always intimidated me, because I am not masculine and never will be, cannot be, I curse myself for it. (Which is probably why the only John Ford movie I’d seen before this was the one my mother loved so much.) What is masculinity? It is stoicism; that is one thing only — not showing emotion. John Wayne is a perfect John Ford actor because it’s unclear whether or not he can actually act emotion — at least it was unclear to me — until I saw this film. He can; but only through the veil of masculinity — which makes it all the more touching, of course. Shakespeare is onto this — the woman inside the man — Hamlet is an effeminate male (please stop trying to play him as a warrior, he is the opposite of that!). When Ophelia dies, Laertes cries, and then curses himself, knuckles clenched: “When these are gone, / The woman will be out.” But can you ever really cut the woman out of you, man? They Were Expendable is a series of combat scenes — after all it’s basically a World War II propaganda flick — but between each battle is a moment for men to show emotion. From this film I learned that men are masculine — not because they don’t have emotion — but because they don’t show it. From the moment that Robert Montgomery (15 years older now, I watched him 3 days ago in War Nurse) sees a young recruit shivering, and asks: ‘You got wet clothes underneath that blanket?” and the boy says, innocent, wide-eyed: “No — just scared” and instead of castigating him, or puffing out his chest, Montgomery quietly and somewhat embarrassedly says, so that no one can hear: “You haven’t got a monopoly on that” — well, I was gone. John Ford is admitting at the outset that inside these boys are frightened little girls, but what makes them men is goddamit, they will never admit it. Like teenage girls, they are terribly fond of a ship’s cat — a black cat called “Good Luck.” When Donna Read asks John Wayne to dance, he responds like a man: “Listen sister, I don’t dance and I can’t take time now to learn.” But he shows up, and the romance, of course, begins. But the moment when the jig was up, when I realised John Ford must have read his Judith Butler — or at least channeled her in 1945 —was when all the guys go to visit their buddy who only has 9 days to live; they’re all cheery, and kid him, competitively, and after they’re gone and he’s alone with Robert Montgomery the dying guy says: “nice act you boys put on.” He knows he’s going to die and so do they, but men are men and must put on a brave face. Masculinity is an act, a performance — albeit a mandatory one — for western males. I wish I understood masculinity, I wish I could play that game, I’ve never been able to play it and I’m sorry, I really am. I didn’t go to Vietnam. I was a kind of involuntary draft dodger (this is an excuse, I know) — my mother who loved me very much scuttled me up here to Canada, knowing that I might not be drafted here, and I wasn’t. What would I have done in Vietnam? Run, cry? Put on a dress and entertain the troops.? I’m not John Wayne, and all I have is this, what I’m offering you now, my emotions. Perhaps you don’t believe that I’m emotional at all, because I’ve been complaining about Coronovirus self-isolation. Perhaps you think I’m a cold hearted fag and the next thing I”m going to do is carelessly name-drop the fact that Cameron Mitchel is in They Were Expendable and I used to be best friends with his daughter Camille (though she had many friends) and Cameron Mitchell was ‘Happy’ in Death of a Salesman (on Broadway and in the movie with Lee J. Cobb) and Camille and I worked at the Shaw festival together nearly forty years ago (she wouldn’t like me giving away the year) and I loved her as only a fag can love a movie star. And when Gina Mallet (the Toronto Star theatre reviewer whose reputation was like her name) gave Camille a terrible review, calling her a ‘cement Lana Turner’ Camille phoned me crying, and asked: “Sky, am I a ‘cement Lana Turner’?” because I knew — as she did — that when you read words like that about yourself in the newspaper they just never go away. Our favourite thing was clearing patios. We would sit out at her hotel on the patio (Camille’s mother was a millionaire and whenever she wanted to go to a hotel she just did) and talk dirty about boys until the rest of the sun-worshipers would, one by one, desert us, and Camille would say — “what about that, we can still sure clear a patio!” Sorry: I just had to do that little song and dance; it’s camp, it’s my act, it’s, ironically the closest thing I have to masculinity because it hides the tears. And I’m afraid that’s all I have to offer you, as Noel Coward said. I have a talent to amuse (or I am deluded enough to imagine I have such a talent) which is why I can’t stop writing these damn old bad movie reviews. And yes I will get to the title of this movie. They Were Expendable. Is anyone expendable? Of course not. Did you think I would say that they were? In war, people were expendable — yes the generals in this movie say that certain PT boat crews were expendable— but the Coronavirus isn’t war, and no one is expendable. But we all die, which means we are all expendable in the eyes of God.
