Onionhead
| Onionhead | |
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theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Norman Taurog |
| Produced by | Jules Schermer |
| Written by | Nelson Gidding |
| Based on |
Onionhead (novel) by Weldon Hill |
| Starring | Andy Griffith |
| Music by | David Buttolph |
| Cinematography | Harold Hal Rosson |
| Edited by | William H. Ziegler |
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Release date
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Running time
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111 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $960,000 |
Onionhead is a 1958 comedy-drama film set on a U.S. Coast Guard ship during World War II, starring Andy Griffith and featuring Felicia Farr, Walter Matthau, Erin O'Brien, James Gregory, Joey Bishop, and Claude Akins. It was directed by Norman Taurog and was written by Nelson Gidding and Weldon Hill from Hill's novel. "Weldon Hill" was the pseudonym of William R. Scott, a native Oklahoman who based the novel on his own World War II service in the Coast Guard.
Griffith had experienced success with his previous service comedy, No Time for Sergeants, and Onionhead was an attempt to cash in on that success. It was marketed as an uproarious comedy but is actually a comedy-drama with some fairly dark themes. Onionhead was such a notorious flop that it drove Griffith into television, according to Griffith's videotaped interview in the Archive of American Television.
In the spring of 1941, Al Woods quits an Oklahoma college to join the armed forces after a quarrel with his co-ed sweetheart, Jo. He joins the Coast Guard, partly by chance due to the flip of a coin. After boot training, Al is assigned to a buoy tender in Boston, the Periwinkle, as a ship's cook although he has no cooking experience. He encounters immediate hostility from the chief of the galley, Red Wildoe, from new crew mates and cooks' helpers Gutsell and Poznicki, and from his arrogant department head, Lieutenant (junior grade) Higgins.
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