This independent film released through United Artists was Barbara Stanwyck's first venture into comedy. According to a biography of her she made this one immediately after splitting from husband Frank Fay and she was staying with Zeppo Marx and his wife.
Reading the blurb about Red Salute I can hardly believe that anyone got so worked up over this rather innocuous screen comedy. Actual fistfights occurred in the audience and the American Communist Party picketed this film probably bringing in a few more bucks at the box office as a result.
Stanwyck is an army brat, daughter of General Purnell Pratt and she's committed the foulest of sins according to him, she's in love with a Communist student Hardie Albright. But the army has the goods on him, he's not a US citizen and can be deported for something if they can find some kind of charge like inciting to riot. Mere free speech won't do it, there's that First Amendment you know.
Through a series of comical and drunken accidents she and enlisted man Robert Young leave together and even hijack a trailer from its owner Cliff Edwards. Truth be told Edwards would like to get away from that harridan of a wife he married Ruth Donnelly.
After this it becomes one of dozens of imitation films of It Happened One Night. That time on the road with Young with Cliff Edwards crooning I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now make Stanwyck see the error of her ways even if she won't admit it.
Red Salute is a pleasant and innocuous sort of film, a much better view of radical student politics of the 30s is found in The Way We Were. I also couldn't help thinking that if Albright avoided deportation he'd be in front of the House Un American Activities Committee in a dozen years.
A sequel film with that as a premise might have proved interesting.