I find that occasionally I recall the time I first watched a film with better clarity than the film itself. I wish this was one of them. RALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG, BOYS! apparently came from a very funny book by Max Shulman, but that I'd expect. From what I've read in the other comments the novel's framework seems to have been kept, but Shulman's witty barbs thrown out. This is frequently the case with Hollywood treatments of good books (i.e.: even if you liked Robert Redford's version of THE GREAT GATSBY, it and the previous one with Alan Ladd can't match Fitzgerald's terrific novel). I first saw this film (I've seen it two times, strangely enough) when it was shown about 1962 or 1963 on Saturday NIGHT AT THE MOVIES on television. Paul Newman was at the then height of his early film career as one of the best of the "Young Turk" breed of actors with Brando and Clift. But while doing well with dramas (SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME, THE YOUNG PHILADELPHIANS, CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, HUD, THE HUSTLER, HOMBRE) he failed to register any real success as a comic actor. In the long run it did not matter (it was just the choice of material). Films like BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, THE STING, THE HUDSUCKER PROXY, SLAP SHOT) all eventually showed he did have a mastery of comedy - but not bedroom farce. Leave that to his contemporary Rock Hudson. Actually I think Newman's first successful comic part (he was not the star of the whole film) was as the second doomed husband (the painter) in Shirley MacLaine's WHAT A WAY TO GO.
RALLY, 'ROUND THE FLAG, BOYS! like his other early doomed comedy, A NEW KIND OF LOVE, co-starred his wife Joanne Woodward. Both appeared together (to better advantage) in the more dramatic THE LONG HOT SUMMER, which did have some normal comic sections that Newman did well with Woodward and Orson Welles and Tony Franciosa. But that film blended comedy and drama, and the comic sections emphasized the conniving spirit of Newman's character Ben. Here he is a business executive returning to Putnam's Landing, Connecticut daily from his job in Manhattan. While such a position is not impossible to see Newman in, it is not handled as a similar situation was for Rock Hudson in his last Doris Day romp, SEND ME NO FLOWERS. Hudson's business executive went home with next-door-neighbor Tony Randall, and manages to depress the ebullient Randall with dire personal news. With Newman one imagines he just reads the New York Times on the way home. Woodward is there of course (as Doris was for Rock), but while one sees the sparks of personal chemistry between them, they don't translate to the humor that just sparkled between Doris and Rock on screen.
The plots in the movie are three: the trouble of the community regarding a new military base (connected, as it turns out, to the space program) being built near their town; the rocky personal relationship between married Paul and Joanne - especially as local rich witch (what else would she be?) Joan Collins thrown in; and the romance of young Tuesday Wells with Dwayne Hickman, who finds the competition rising - as do his fellow civilian teenage jocks - from the local military looking for relaxation on weekends. Joanne becomes the leading, anti-base spokesperson. She is confronted by base commander Gale Gordon, and his assistant Jack Carson. Given this set-up the viewer knows who is more likely to win.
Of the scenes I recall best, Collins and Carson did the most with material. Collins, of course, is an attractive woman (and here she was fantastic to look at), and one shot I recall when she and her target Newman are drinking and dancing together is of them bumping (possibly on purpose by her) derrières. She certainly brought spice into her scenes. Carson did what he could. Only a year before he gave one of his most dramatic performances in THE TARNISHED ANGELS with Hudson, Dorothy Malone, and Robert Stack, and in 1958 he would do yeoman work as Newman's bitter brother Goober in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, but the material there (Faulkner's PYLON and Tennessee Williams' CAT) helped him. Here he is a put-upon middle man taking orders barked out by Gordon and trying to restrain angry impulses of his own towards the townspeople. Yet he did do well, especially in two sequences which were relatively simple: the Thanksgiving pageant (where he keeps slipping on a wet rock supposedly representing Plymouth Rock), and the final shot where he is outsmarted by somebody who shouldn't have outsmarted him.
The Thanksgiving pageant has it's moments, with Hickman (as an Indian) leading his fellow "Indians" onto the oncoming "Pilgrims" (the soldiers from the base). And there is also the apparently unheralded capsizing of "the Mayflower", all to the amazement of pageant coordinator and narrator Woodward. Unfortunately even this suffers from comparison to other films. Think of the Thanksgiving pageant in ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES where Wednesday releases tensions at her school by giving the actors playing the Pilgrims a "grim" view of what happened to the Native Americans in the U.S. due to the arrival of the Europeans. She was far more eloquent, and one sympathized with the point of view (even if descended from those Europeans). Somehow that seemed more relevant for consideration in such a situation than whether quiet Putnam's Landing should accept the missile base next to it.
So, for the sake of the comic (and sexy) bits I liked, I will give this film a "6" rather than anything higher. Without those it would have been lower.
RALLY, 'ROUND THE FLAG, BOYS! like his other early doomed comedy, A NEW KIND OF LOVE, co-starred his wife Joanne Woodward. Both appeared together (to better advantage) in the more dramatic THE LONG HOT SUMMER, which did have some normal comic sections that Newman did well with Woodward and Orson Welles and Tony Franciosa. But that film blended comedy and drama, and the comic sections emphasized the conniving spirit of Newman's character Ben. Here he is a business executive returning to Putnam's Landing, Connecticut daily from his job in Manhattan. While such a position is not impossible to see Newman in, it is not handled as a similar situation was for Rock Hudson in his last Doris Day romp, SEND ME NO FLOWERS. Hudson's business executive went home with next-door-neighbor Tony Randall, and manages to depress the ebullient Randall with dire personal news. With Newman one imagines he just reads the New York Times on the way home. Woodward is there of course (as Doris was for Rock), but while one sees the sparks of personal chemistry between them, they don't translate to the humor that just sparkled between Doris and Rock on screen.
The plots in the movie are three: the trouble of the community regarding a new military base (connected, as it turns out, to the space program) being built near their town; the rocky personal relationship between married Paul and Joanne - especially as local rich witch (what else would she be?) Joan Collins thrown in; and the romance of young Tuesday Wells with Dwayne Hickman, who finds the competition rising - as do his fellow civilian teenage jocks - from the local military looking for relaxation on weekends. Joanne becomes the leading, anti-base spokesperson. She is confronted by base commander Gale Gordon, and his assistant Jack Carson. Given this set-up the viewer knows who is more likely to win.
Of the scenes I recall best, Collins and Carson did the most with material. Collins, of course, is an attractive woman (and here she was fantastic to look at), and one shot I recall when she and her target Newman are drinking and dancing together is of them bumping (possibly on purpose by her) derrières. She certainly brought spice into her scenes. Carson did what he could. Only a year before he gave one of his most dramatic performances in THE TARNISHED ANGELS with Hudson, Dorothy Malone, and Robert Stack, and in 1958 he would do yeoman work as Newman's bitter brother Goober in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, but the material there (Faulkner's PYLON and Tennessee Williams' CAT) helped him. Here he is a put-upon middle man taking orders barked out by Gordon and trying to restrain angry impulses of his own towards the townspeople. Yet he did do well, especially in two sequences which were relatively simple: the Thanksgiving pageant (where he keeps slipping on a wet rock supposedly representing Plymouth Rock), and the final shot where he is outsmarted by somebody who shouldn't have outsmarted him.
The Thanksgiving pageant has it's moments, with Hickman (as an Indian) leading his fellow "Indians" onto the oncoming "Pilgrims" (the soldiers from the base). And there is also the apparently unheralded capsizing of "the Mayflower", all to the amazement of pageant coordinator and narrator Woodward. Unfortunately even this suffers from comparison to other films. Think of the Thanksgiving pageant in ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES where Wednesday releases tensions at her school by giving the actors playing the Pilgrims a "grim" view of what happened to the Native Americans in the U.S. due to the arrival of the Europeans. She was far more eloquent, and one sympathized with the point of view (even if descended from those Europeans). Somehow that seemed more relevant for consideration in such a situation than whether quiet Putnam's Landing should accept the missile base next to it.
So, for the sake of the comic (and sexy) bits I liked, I will give this film a "6" rather than anything higher. Without those it would have been lower.