Take the High Ground (M-G-M), an Ansco Color hymn to the glories of the Army's basic training, was filmed to the tune of a flag-waving theme song (Take the high ground and hold it! Tho' you face eternity . . .). The raw recruits who are to be turned into soldiers include such familiar characters as the bragging Texan, the brash college boy, the sensitive Negro and the weakling. Happily, the picture spares moviegoers another movie version of the Brooklynite. Richard Widmark barks his way through the role of the tough sergeant, and a curious attempt is made to give him an extra dimension by having him quote from Edna St. Vincent Millay. Karl Maiden, as his easygoing sidekick, tries to soften Widmark's third-degree tactics in close-order drill and simulated combat.
On weekends Widmark switches from glowering at recruits to glowering at pretty Elaine Stewart, a crazy, mixed-up kid who cannot stay away from soldiers, apparently because her soldier-husband was killed in Korea. Despite all its predictable moments—Widmark has a fight with another noncom, is nearly shot by one of his resentful recruits, makes a man of the weakling, falls in love with the girl but stays true to the Army—High Ground manages to generate a clumsy, convincing power. But not many ex-soldiers are likely to concede that 16 weeks of basic training —even under such a superman as Widmark—would result in the superbly trained and conditioned squad that marches offscreen, at the picture's end, to Dimitri Tiomkin's heroic music.
Half a Hero (MGM) is a comedy that sets out to tell a few home truths about middle-class life in the U.S. suburbs. For those who are suffering the general financial trials of raising a family and buying a house, and would like company, Half a Hero provides a pretty satisfying answer to the eternal question of how to keep a soft heart in an era of hard currency.
Red Skelton, the hero, is a rewrite man on a small magazine in Manhattan. Though sure of neither himself nor his job, he is happy with his bride in their cozy little flat. Then baby comes, and his wife (Jean Hagen) begs Red to find a place outside the city. In the end, of course, she finds the place herself and carries him bodily across the mortgage threshold.
Once inside, Red rallies briefly, but in no time a colossal plumbing bill knocks him flat. Down he goes again when the interior decorator delivers his account. ("Sconces!" he croaks, discovering that all he gets for so much money are wall fixtures.) In the next few months, Red plays hard to get, but the tradesmen get him anyway. By quick stages, he is reduced to a fiscal wreck who can only make feeble protests against his son's dental expenses. Thereupon his wife stuns him to silence and final despair by explaining coldly that, when a baby tooth falls out prematurely, "the other teeth drift."