User Reviews

The US Army is on a desperate retreat in Korea towards what would become the Pusan Perimeter, when Private Bobby Driscoll in given a rifle and his first combat assignment, trying to hold a position under sour Master Sergeant Rory Calhoun. His men respect him for his 19 years in the Army, don't don't like his sour attitude. Then he finds a Korean bugle, and he and Driscoll bond over music. We get a glimpse into what has turned him sour: the lack of tradition that drives men onward.

The second episode of Screen Directors Playhouse is a good one, especially because under the direction of Frank Borzage, we get a whisper of the mystical forces at play behind Borzage's best.

Screen Directors Playhouse: Day Is Done (1955)

** (out of 4)

Second episode in the Screen Directors Playhouse series has Frank Borzage doing the direction. The film takes place during the Korean War as a tough Master Sgt. (Rory Calhoun) gets to know a new soldier (Bobby Driscoll) and it turns out the two have a love for music. They end up finding a bugle on a dead soldier and they plan on using it to help the other men through the hard times. I'm sure there was a lot of heart intended for this episode but sadly the end result is rather boring. You're going to find a couple strong performances and technically the film is fine but I think the screenplay is just so lacking that it really destroys everything good that's going on. The biggest problem is that the speech about the bugle is just so over-the-top that you really can't take it too serious. I also thought it was a rather ordinary and unoriginal way to show the Master Sgt. as a jerk and yet he finally breaks through with this passion. The entire story structure was leading up to a predictable ending but I will admit that it was mildly effective. What the movie does have going for it are a couple very strong performances with Calhoun leading the way. Even though we didn't need yet another tough Sgt,, the actor at least gives it his all and really makes you believe everything you're seeing. Calhoun certainly captured the toughness of the character without a problem. I thought Driscoll was also very effective in the way he shows how naive and scared this new soldier way. The two actors are quite good together and they certainly raise the level of the story. Borzage does a nice job with the visuals and the good looking battle scenes are certainly a plus but you just wish something better had been written around them.

This story is set in Korea during the war and concerns a regiment of raw recruits and tired men. A sergeant (Calhoun) uses an old abandoned bugle to rally his troops and save democracy.

The notion of "Screen Directors Playhouse" sounds awesome. Top Hollywood directors and actors work together to bring half house teleplays to the public back in the 1950s. A few of these episodes are quite good, this one actually sucks. It features a top director (Frank Borzage) and some interesting talent (Rory Calhoun and Bobby Driscoll in one of his few adult roles) but the story goes no where. Why? Because the script is just stupid--and acting and directing cannot hide this. It really makes little sense, as it must have been a relatively expensive show to produce--so why have a script this bad?!

Veteran director Frank Borzage directed this entry in the "Screen Directors Playhouse" series, and it's not a particularly good one. A story set during the Korean War about a tough sergeant in charge of a squad of new replacements who must get them "ready" for upcoming combat, it's saddled with an uninspired script and performances from a second-tier cast (Rory Calhoun, Bobby Driscoll). Calhoun's sergeant turns out to be somewhat of a musician, and when one of his men finds a bugle on a dead Chinese soldier, Calhoun decides to show his men what the army was like "in the old days" by blowing bugle calls (Reveille, Charge, etc.) in hopes that it would help his squad become better soldiers. It's a fairly dumb premise, and not one that a sergeant with 19 years in the army who'd fought in both World War II and Korea would very likely come up with.

In any case, the hackneyed script and underwhelming performances aren't the episode's only problems--its chintzy production values only magnify its many shortcomings, resulting in a less-than-mediocre product that's not worthy of a major director like Frank Borzage. Skip it.

Lacklustre drama whose elements flatten out rather than coalesce into compelling narrative. The concept itself is a tricky one— how the role of bugle calls serve to rally a listless army platoon in the Korean War, 1951. Now making bugle calls the central element of a war drama means that the drama really has to come from the human elements who reflect the effects of the call. Trouble is that Bobby Driscoll (Prvt. Zane), in a central role, should register the emotional change, but instead either doesn't get the proper coaching or simply walks through his part. Nor does he or his platoon show fear when the enemy (Chinese) attacks. Yet it's really from a background of fear that real courage emerges. Showing how a bugle can galvanize troops to overcome natural fear is what the drama needs to do, but crucially doesn't. For some reason ace director Borzage (Moonrise, {1948}) fails to move his cast into the appropriate mood changes. Even the potentially powerful ending appears more listless than involving. In fact, the production as a whole seems oddly detached. Thus we're left with a basically unrealized potential. Too bad.