January 27

Donna Reed

Ms. Reed was probably most know for her role in It's A Wonderful Life. She is good in that film. She plays a young woman to a middle aged married woman, with a spinster thrown in for a good measure. She got a lot of grief for her role on Dallas as Miss Ellie. I always that that she did not deserve that. Who did not love The Donna Reed Show?

I watched They Were Expendable. She had a small role, but was integral to the story. She played a nurse in the pacific islands in the early days of WWII. John Wayne played a soldier who is wounded and goes to the hospital where she is stationed. She is tough and feminine and can force John Wayne to do her bidding. I have never seen a woman better lighted in more ways in a film before. When a group of wounded soldiers come in and the are under attack while performing surgery the light shines on her face and you see the determination and concentration with an underling layer of fear. There is a flickering of light so it is black then you see her face. This happens several times until the lights don't come back on. Several days later there is a dance and when Donna first sees John the light on her face is horizontal lines, like thin blinds. It is a very striking affect. You see her eyes light up and she goes to him. They then dance and go to a side area and sit and talk, where they are silhouetted and then they are sitting on a hammock where they are looking in the same direction and the light is on the profile of their faces. The last time she is seen on film ¾ of her face is shown in light while most of the scenery is dark.

There is plenty of action in the film. It is almost like watching a newsreel of the real action. Robert Montgomery plays a PT commander and the story is really told by the PT boats. They are really the center of the story. The story starts out a few days or a day before the Pearl Harbor attacks. At that time they have 6-8 boats. The base commander does not think the boats are worthy of anything except running messages and transportation carrier. When their base is attacked Robert takes the PT boats out and get several Japanese planes. One of the boats takes the wounded soldiers to the hospital. On the next mission 2 boats go out but only one comes back. Same on the next mission. In Bataan 4 boats leave to escort The General and staff to a safer place. 1 boat is lost and they never find it. When they are at a break after the mission a boat gets damaged by a coral (Wayne jumps in the water and swims to the boat to check the damage) and they take it to get repaired. 2 boots go out on a mission and they get separated afterwords. Wayne's boat is damaged but they manage to get to shore where a Japanese plane destroys the boat. When the smoke clears and Wayne sees the destruction of his boat, he takes off his hat and he falls to sand as if his knees could not hold him up anymore. Wayne goes back to where the 1 one boat was being repaired, but the boat is gone, but it is never explained how. Wayne meets up with Montgomery and the last boat is being taken by the army. The boat is on a flat bed truck and is driven away. Like launching a boat in the sea the boat slowly drives out of sight on land with Anchors Away playing softly on the soundtrack.