Take the High Ground!
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| Take the High Ground! | |
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 |
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| Directed by | Richard Brooks |
| Produced by | Dore Schary |
| Written by | Millard Kaufman |
| Starring | Richard Widmark Karl Malden Elaine Stewart Carleton Carpenter Russ Tamblyn Jerome Courtland Steve Forrest Robert Arthur Chris Warfield William Hairston Maurice Jara Bert Freed |
| Music by | Dimitri Tiomkin |
| Cinematography | John Alton |
| Editing by | John Dunning |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | October 30, 1953 (U.S. release) |
| Running time | 101 min. |
| Language | English |
Take the High Ground! is a Korean War picture with Richard Widmark and Karl Malden as drill instructors who must transform a batch of everyday civilians into real combat soldiers. Widmark plays the hard-as-nails Sgt. Thorne Ryan and Karl Malden, the benevolent Sgt. Holt. The recruits, as you might expect, are each multi-diverse, thus sheding personal ingenuity into the film; the jubilant southerner, the African-American from the inner city and the ominous cowardly recruit.
The opening credits were preceded by a title reading "Korea May, 1951" and a brief scene depicting the character "Sgt. Thorne Ryan" in combat. The opening credits also acknowledge the "thousands of fighting men at Fort Bliss" and contain the following written prologue:
"An Infantryman once said, 'There was a time I wanted to kill my drill sergeant, but later in combat I thanked God for what he taught me. I found out that a drill sergeant, tough as he was, wasn't as tough as the enemy.'"
The closing credits, which differ in order from the opening credits, appear over footage of each of the principal actors.
[edit] Plot
In May 1953, a new group of Army recruits at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas encounter their drill instructors, Sgt. Laverne Holt and the tough young Sgt. Thorne Ryan. After Ryan's caustic appraisal of the recruits, Holt vows to make soldiers out of them during the sixteen weeks of basic training. Ryan, a combat veteran who resents his stateside duty, repeatedly applies for a transfer back to the Korean front. One night, the men cross the border to Mexico for recreation. In a bar, Ryan and Holt see a beautiful woman, Julie Mollison, buying drinks for a group of soldiers. Later that evening, the two sergeants escort the inebriated Julie to her apartment, and Ryan finds himself drawn to her. Training resumes, and Ryan exposes his men to tear gas to prepare them for the harsh conditions of battle. Ryan and Holt return to the bar one night, and find Julie sitting alone. When the crude Sgt. Vince Opperman insults Julie, she runs out of the bar in tears, and Holt comforts her. Ryan and Opperman fight, and Opperman reveals that Julie was married to a soldier who was killed in Korea shortly after she left him.
One day, recruit Lobo Naglaski visits the camp chaplain to confess his murderous feelings toward Ryan, but comes to see that the sergeant has very little time in which to do a tough job. Tensions arise between Ryan and Holt, both over Ryan's callous treatment of the men and Holt's relationship with Julie. Ryan puts his men through increasingly tough drills, and during a bitter confrontation one day, Holt slugs Ryan and walks away. Later, Ryan calls on Julie at her apartment, and they fall into a passionate embrace. When she resists his further advances, however, Ryan becomes insulting, casting aspersions on Julie's virtue and chiding her for having left her late husband. One day, during a field exercise, recruit Donald Quentin Dover IV runs away. Ryan tracks him down and gives the young man a second chance, confessing that his own father had been a deserter. As the training period draws to a close, Ryan returns to Julie's apartment and discovers she has moved out. He finds Julie and Holt at the train station. After Holt leaves, Ryan apologizes for his earlier behavior and asks Julie to marry him, but she sadly replies that he is married to the Army. Outside the train station, Ryan and Holt silently make their peace. The men finish basic training, and as the new soldiers march by during their graduation exercises, Ryan proudly points them out to a fresh group of recruits.
[edit] Awards
- Take the High Ground! received an Academy Award-nomintion for Best Original Screenplay, ultimately losing to Titanic
[edit] Trivia
- The working title for the film was The Making of a Marine.
- The film was originally to be shot at the U.S. Marine boot camp in San Diego, CA, but it was later asserted that "the Marines refused to cooperate because they did not want to stir up old controversies over the toughness of their training program." The Army, however, cooperated fully with the studio, and location filming took place at Fort Bliss in El Paso, TX.
- According to pre-production Hollywood Reporter news item, James Arness, Ralph Meeker, James Whitmore, William Campbell, and Richard Anderson, were cast, but they were not in the film.
