No Time for Sergeants

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No Time for Sergeants was a 1954 best-selling novel by Mac Hyman, which was later adapted into a popular Broadway play and 1958 motion picture, as well as a 1964 television series. The book chronicles the misadventures of a country bumpkin named Will Stockdale who is drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II and assigned to the United States Army Air Forces.

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[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

[edit] Broadway play

Ira Levin adapted Hyman's novel for a play which originally appeared as an episode on The United States Steel Hour television series in March 1955, starring Andy Griffith as Will Stockdale and Myron McCormick as his nemesis Sergeant Orville King. The play then opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre on October 20, 1955, produced by Maurice Evans and directed by Morton DaCosta. Griffith and McCormick again starred, and Don Knotts made his Broadway debut as Corporal Manual Dexterity. Scenic designer Peter Larkin won a Tony Award in 1956, and Andy Griffith was nominated for a Tony for Best Featured Actor. The play ran for a total of 796 performances, closing on September 14, 1957.

[edit] Motion picture

No Time for Sergeants was released as a Warner Bros. motion picture on May 29, 1958, directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Griffith, McCormick, Knotts, and most of the original Broadway cast (Nick Adams joined the cast as Stockdale's fellow draftee Benjamin B. Whitledge). The film version was a major hit and was largely responsible for launching the careers of Griffith and Knotts. The setting for the film (and later TV version) was updated to reflect the then-current peacetime forces of the 50's and the characters were members of the now separate United States Air Force.

[edit] Television series

No Time for Sergeants came to the small screen as a short-lived ABC television series in the fall of 1964, starring Sammy Jackson. This series lasted only one season.

No Time for Sergeants was also the inspiration for the popular CBS television series Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. which aired from 1964-1969.

[edit] Comics

The four comics inspired by No Time For Sergeants
The four comics inspired by No Time For Sergeants

There exists the Dell Four Color Issue 914 comic book version of this story illustrated by Alex Toth published in July, 1958 which follows the movie's narrative. There were three follow up issues likely linked to the short lived TV series with Sammy Jackson. Greg Theakston's Pure Imagination released The Alex Toth Reader, v2 in 2005. The art has been painstakingly reproduced from the originals by a process that has been come to be know as Theakstonization, a process by which the original comics have the color leached out, leaving only the black and white line art, which is then reproduced to appear exactly as it did at the time of original publication. One of the stories offered is the original movie adaptation.

[edit] External links

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