Pop Culture 101 - THEY WERE EXPENDABle

John Ford was a long-time friend of screenwriter Frank "Spig" Wead who wrote the screenplay for They Were Expendable. Wead had a colorful career, first as a Navy test pilot and later as a writer. He was one of the earliest proponents for military aviation, beginning before WWI. After serving in the War, he set many flying records for speed, duration, and distance ¿ all intended to push the design limits of Navy aircraft. In 1926 he broke his neck and was paralyzed, so he turned to writing for the screen. In this capacity he continued to tout military aviation, and he had a hand in the story or screenplay for almost every movie on the subject for almost 20 years, including Airmail (1932), Ceiling Zero (1936), Test Pilot (1938), I Wanted Wings (1941), and Dive Bomber (1941). Ford would later direct Wead's life story as The Wings of Eagles (1957), with John Wayne as Wead and Ward Bond as a movie director based on Ford.

They Were Expendable turned out to be the next-to-the-last film for cinematographer Joseph H. August, a two-time Oscar® nominee whose career of nearly 150 films stretched back to 1912. He died during the filming of Portrait of Jennie in 1947.

Although Ford was later to complain about the "heavy" scoring of They Were Expendable, even saying that he would have preferred almost no music at all, Herbert Stothart provided a varied, evocative score. In the tradition of several other Ford movies, it is peppered with snatches of popular tunes. "Anchors Aweigh", "My Country `Tis of Thee" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" are heard, as is one of Ford's favorite folk tunes, "Red River Valley."

by John Miller