The Big Idea Behind THEY WERE EXPENDABLE

Director John Ford had the desire to start a motion picture unit for the upcoming war effort well before the United States entered WWII. After initial resistance, the Navy accepted Ford and his volunteer cameramen and editors as a reserve unit and broke them up into several combat camera teams. In time, John Ford was a captain in the Navy Photographic Field Unit, and won Oscars® for his documentaries The Battle of Midway (1942) and December 7th (1943). Ford personally saw action on several important front lines. In addition to Midway (where he was wounded and won a Purple Heart), Ford was with the Doolittle squadron in raids over Tokyo, filmed battles on Marcus Island and Wotje, and took part in the invasion of North Africa.

In 1942, MGM purchased the film rights to the then-current bestseller They Were Expendable, written by William L. White. Jim McGuinness was the executive put in charge of the project. He had the wisdom to hire Frank "Spig" Wead to write the screenplay. Wead had been one of the biggest proponents of military aviation, first through his test flights for the Navy, and later through stories and screenplays for motion pictures. He was also good friends with John Ford, the director that McGuinness hoped to persuade to direct They Were Expendable. White's book was dry and straightforward, composed primarily of interviews with John Bulkeley and other principal PT boat officers. Wead's script gave the story a grandeur and poignancy. Now McGuinness had the task of persuading Navy officer Ford to direct the picture.

McGuinness and Wead flew to Washington D.C. to make the offer to Ford, and convince him that the Navy picture would be as great a service to the country as his war documentaries had been. Ford was unconvinced and didn't want to take a leave of absence while his Field Photographic Unit was busy in many far-flung, dangerous locations. He was also worried about taking the salary for the work with MGM. Meanwhile, Eddie Mannix, the MGM production manager, had another writer, Sidney Franklin, do rewrites on Wead's script. Ford thought the new script weakened the intensity of the story, and used it as an excuse to back out of the project. In addition, he had a new Navy assignment in August of 1943 and was shipped off to the Far East Theater.

When Ford returned to California in March of 1944, McGuinness again took up the cause. According to Dan Ford's biography of his grandfather, McGuinness told Ford that the depiction of Bulkeley and the PT boats would be "...part of America's heroic tradition. It's like the Alamo or Valley Forge. It would be like recreating a great moment of history while it's still fresh in people's minds. It would be available for our youth, generation after generation." The pleadings were still in vain - Ford was not swayed.

In April 1944, Ford left for London and preparations to film the upcoming secret D-Day invasion. The head of the London branch of the Field Photographic Unit was Mark Armistead - he and his men had been photographing the beaches of Normandy for months. Helping the reconnaissance effort, as the officer in charge of the English Channel squadron of PT boats, was none other than John Bulkeley! In a now famous incident, Armistead brought Bulkeley to Ford's hotel to introduce the two men. Ford had been asleep, but when he learned who had just stepped into his room, he leapt to his feet to salute the Medal of Honor recipient - without a stitch of clothing on.

Two months later, Ford found himself on the U.S.S. Augusta as part of the great armada that took part in the Normandy invasion. He wanted to get closer to the combat, and had Armistead and Bulkeley pick him up in their PT boat. They patrolled the beachheads, including Omaha Beach where some of the thickest fighting occurred. Ford spent five days on the patrol, and developed a rapport with Bulkeley. Dan Ford described the irony: "Here he was at Normandy with John Bulkeley, the subject of a best-selling book that half the people he respected in Hollywood wanted him to make into a film. But he wasn't making that film because he was too busy fighting the war - with Bulkeley!"

Experiencing the war side-by-side with Bulkeley convinced Ford to finally direct They Were Expendable. Upon his return to Los Angeles, he told McGuinness he would start, as long as he could throw out the latest version of the script and have Wead do the revisions instead. The producer agreed, and Ford went on detached duty from the Navy in October 1944. After two years of uncertainty and delays, shooting began on February 1st, 1945. That day was also John Ford's fifty-first birthday.

by John Miller