Max Shulman, satirical short story writer and novelist, famed for his creation of Dobie Gillis, was a hot commodity in the fifties. Aside from creating Gillis in a pair of short stories early in the decade, which would later become the basis for a novel, movie, and television series, he also co-wrote the Broadway hit The Tender Trap, later made into a successful Frank Sinatra movie. When it came time to adapt his novel Rally Round the Flag, Boys!, it was an easy sell for the studios. Casting was pretty easy too, with hot new stars Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward eager to jump aboard something bound to be a smash hit. The two had become an item the year before, though Newman was married at the time, leading to his divorce from his first wife and marriage to Woodward in 1958. Given that infidelity was a key plot point in the movie, it was certainly helpful to the studios to have as much gossip as possible fly around the Hollywood rags about Newman and Woodward in connection with the movie.

Rally Round the Flag, Boys! takes place in the small community of Putnam's Landing, Connecticut, a town whose founder was scalped the day after its founding and whose scalping remains, according to narration by then unknown David Hedison, the last interesting thing that happened there. Until, of course, the military buys up some land and wants to use it for a missile base. That sends the town into action the only way the town knows how to go into action: form a committee and then form a women's version of said committee, chaired by Grace Bannerman (Joanne Woodward), wife of Harry Bannerman (Paul Newman), the one man in town who can't seem to get any time alone with his wife. When she, as head of the new committee to keep the military out, appoints Harry to go to Washington on the one day they were going to be together, neighborhood vixen Angela Hoffa (Joan Collins) sees the opportunity to go to Washington herself and keep Harry company, leading to the kind of mix-ups and misunderstandings one would expect from a thirties screwball comedy. Speaking of which...

Leo McCarey, directed of several screwball comedies including one of the greatest ever, The Awful Truth, was brought on to direct in the hopes of bringing some of his screwball expertise to the proceedings. Certainly the plot lends itself to his talents but the dialogue-heavy comedy worked against it. Many of the scenes in the movie (Harry and Angela driving home or sitting on her sofa, Harry and Grace arguing in their kitchen, Angela and Captain Hoxie (Jack Carson) sitting at a bar) involve stationary action and dialogue, not something McCarey seemed entirely comfortable filming. Despite not being adapted from the play, the movie oddly has the same feel, with long takes that work against the idea of frenetic screwball pacing.

Still, to its credit, Rally Round the Flag, Boys! is filled with talent. Paul Newman had the year of his early career in 1958, with The Long Hot Summer and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof being released earlier in the year. Newman, by the time of Rally Round the Flag, Boys!, had become a Hollywood sensation and his legendary status had begun. In just three years, he would take on the role that would eventually win him an Oscar, Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler (the Oscar came for the sequel, The Color of Money.

Joanne Woodward was already an Oscar winner by the time of the movie's release thanks to her performance in The Three Faces of Eve the year before. She and Paul Newman would stay married until his death and make several more movies together, the last being Mr and Mrs Bridge in 1990, for which Woodward received another nomination for Best Actress. Newman also directed Woodward on several more occasions.

Rounding out the cast are Jack Carson and Joan Collins. Carson had worked with Newman earlier in the year on the classic production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof but here was playing strictly for laughs. Carson was one of the best character actors in all of Hollywood and also one of its best comedians. His drunken scenes at the bar with Collins are some of the funniest in the movie. And Collins, who wouldn't really come into her own until television finally figured out how to use her in the eighties, does a fine job handling both the duties of straight man and seductive vamp. Comedy was an area she definitely should have been used in more with better results.

Rally Round the Flag, Boys! doesn't stand out as one of Leo McCarey's best efforts, nor does it for Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, but it does offer up more than enough to make it worth the time. The talent certainly does the job but the script also lets loose more than a few sharp, witty observations about small town life and the American way. It's satire-lite, pleasant and diverting but still potent enough to hit the target hard when it wants to and rally the audience around the movie.

By Greg Ferrara