You're in the Navy Now | |
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Theatrical poster
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Directed by | Henry Hathaway |
Produced by | Fred Kohlmar |
Written by |
John W. Hazard (magazine article) Richard Murphy |
Starring |
Gary Cooper Jane Greer Millard Mitchell Eddie Albert John McIntire Ray Collins Jack Webb |
Music by | Cyril Mockridge |
Cinematography | Joseph MacDonald |
Edited by | James B. Clark |
Distributed by | Twentieth Century-Fox |
Release date
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Running time
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93 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $1.6 million (US rentals) |
You're in the Navy Now is a Hollywood film released in 1951 by Twentieth Century Fox about the United States Navy in the first months of World War II. Its initial release was titled USS Teakettle. Directed by Henry Hathaway, the film is a comedy starring Gary Cooper as a new officer wanting duty at sea but who is instead assigned to an experimental project without much hope of success.
Filmed in black-and-white aboard PC-1168, an active Navy patrol craft, You're in the Navy Now featured the film debuts of Charles Bronson, Jack Warden, Lee Marvin, and Harvey Lembeck in minor roles as crewmen. Screenwriter Richard Murphy was nominated by the Writers Guild of America for "Best Written American Comedy", basing his script on an article written by John W. Hazard in The New Yorker. Hazard, a professional journalist and naval reservist, had served during World War II as executive officer of the PC-452, a similar craft that served in 1943-44 as a test bed for steam turbine propulsion.
At Norfolk Naval Base in the opening months of World War II, Lieutenant John W. Harkness (Cooper), a newly commissioned officer, bids goodbye to wife Ellie (Jane Greer) and reports aboard the PC-1168 unaware that his civilian background in engineering and his Rutgers education has elected him, by means of a hole punched in an IBM card, to head a secret project and command the ship. The Navy has installed a steam engine and an experimental evaporator-condenser in the ship to test its feasibility in patrol craft and has assigned Harkness to conduct the sea trials.