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When Willie Comes Marching Home A small-town soldier gets a... MORE > $18.99
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According to information in the Twentieth Century-Fox Records of the Legal Department at the UCLA Arts-Special Collections Library, a March 1949 draft of the screenplay for this film was entitled Rise and Shine. A working title for this film was Front and Center. The legal records also indicate that Twentieth Century-Fox purchased the rights to Sy Gomberg's short story for $10,000 in March 1945, and that some filming took place on Santa Catalina Island and at the Conejo Valley Airport in Thousand Oaks, CA. While the Call Bureau Cast Service lists Paul Picerni in the role of Kerrigan and John Mitchum in the role of Schreves, studio records dated earlier list Mickey Simpson as "M. P. Kerrigan" and Don Summers as "M. P. Schreve." The Variety review erroneously notes that this was director John Ford's first comedy. Ford made comedies prior to and following this film, and in 1952 he reteamed Dan Dailey and Corinne Clavet in the comedy What Price Glory. A biography on director John Ford quotes Ford as having said that this film was "one of the funniest films ever made." In 1950, Gomberg received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Story.