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This impasse eventually resolves itself after too much talk and a, few funny sequences have worried it to death. Fonda does buy a double-breasted junior-executive-model suit and makes good, but only for a short time—just long enough to take Ameche's fiancee (Lynn Bari) away from him. In the process he has occasion to demonstrate his favorite procedure for producing instant relaxation ("Think of a piece of raw liver; relax!").
Dope was originally called The Magnificent Jerk. The wary Hays office tabooed the title, but allowed Twentieth Century to keep the offensive word in the script. Ameche, referring to Miss Bari's fondness for Fonda, inquires: "Are you in love with this jerk?" She: "Yes, and he's no jerk, you jerk!"
Ten Gentlemen From West Point (20th Century-Fox) is Producer Darryl Zanuck's version of how the U.S. Military Academy was rehabilitated in the first decades of the 19th Century. As such, it is reasonably accurate historically, though dramatically rather obvious and dull.
The Point, established as an artillery school during the Revolutionary War, is about to be abandoned when Congress gives it a tiny ($25,000) appropriation for a fresh batch of cadets. Commandant Laird Cregar, a frontier soldier who abhors textbook tactics, does his best to goad the cadets into resigning so he can close the place. All but ten do.
Although the picture does not say so, the Academy's savior really turns out to be a bad Indian named Tecumseh. His braves hit the warpath out in Indiana Territory, and the cadets tag along with the regular Army to quell them. With a handful of regulars they rout a thousand braves by applying the tactics their professor (Victor Francen) taught them. That pleases Commandant Cregar and saves the Academy. Cadet George Montgomery, a barefoot Kentuckian, gets the girl (Maureen O'Hara).
Most interesting thing about Ten Gs is the Congressional debate over whether the Point should be continued. Taken almost verbatim from the Congressional Record, its isolationist arguments ("invitation to our neighbors to attack us," etc.) make an astonishingly pre-Pearl Harbor sound. But Kentucky's Henry Clay puts the Academy across. Discovering that the desired appropriation ($25,000) is precisely the sum of the regular Army's annual grog ration, he spread-eagles the isolationists with the crafty utterance: "Which shall it be, gentlemen? Whiskey or West Point?"