When Willie Comes Marching Home
| When Willie Comes Marching Home | |
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1950 Theatrical Poster
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| Directed by | John Ford |
| Produced by | Fred Kohlmar |
| Written by |
Sy Gomberg (story) Richard Sale Mary Loos |
| Starring |
Dan Dailey Corinne Calvet Colleen Townsend William Demarest |
| Music by | Alfred Newman |
| Cinematography | Leo Tover |
| Edited by | James B. Clark |
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Production
company |
20th Century Fox
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Release date
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Running time
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82 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $1,750,000 |
When Willie Comes Marching Home is a 1950 World War II comedy film directed by John Ford and starring Dan Dailey and Corinne Calvet. It is based on the 1945 short story When Leo Comes Marching Home by Sy Gomberg. The film won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival.
William "Bill" Kluggs (Dan Dailey) is the first in his hometown of Punxatawney, West Virginia, to enlist in the Army Air Forces after the attack on Pearl Harbor, making his father Herman (William Demarest), mother Gertrude (Evelyn Varden) and girlfriend Marge Fettles (Colleen Townsend) proud. The whole town sees him off. Willie tries to become a pilot but washes out, although he proves to be so proficient at aerial gunnery that, rather than being sent to Europe to fight, he is made an instructor and assigned to a base near his hometown. After two years in the same place, he is branded a coward by the townsfolk, even though he continually requests a transfer into combat.
He finally gets his chance when a gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber gets sick and Bill is allowed to take his place. The plane takes off for England, but owing to fog, is unable to land and runs low on fuel. The crew is ordered to bail out, but Bill is asleep and does not parachute out of the plane until it is over German-occupied France.
He is captured immediately by the local French Resistance unit, led by the beautiful Yvonne (Corinne Calvet). While there, he sees a secret German rocket launch, which is filmed by the French. He and the film are picked up by a British torpedo boat and taken to England. There, he passes the vital information and his eyewitness confirmation on to a series of important generals, first in London and then in Washington, D.C..
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