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This time John Wayne (a Marine sergeant in Sands of Iwo Jima and a submarine commander in Operation Pacific) becomes a flying Marine major who drives his men ruthlessly to make a case for close ground-support tactics. Executive Officer Robert Ryan, another professional but more humane Marine, almost snaps under the strain. By the time the war moves from Guadalcanal to Okinawa and the plot strikes off its stereotypes of heroic death, comic relief and Stateside romance, Ryan learns from Wayne how to make his own tough command decisions, e.g., sacrificing his best buddy's life to the welfare of a mission.
Though its sweat and tears are obviously fabricated, Flying Leathernecks spills plenty of realistic blood. The film's long sequences of Marine fighters attacking Japanese troops, warships, Zero interceptors and Kamikaze pilots are full of authentic wartime footage, neatly dovetailed into shots of Actor Wayne, teeth bared, zooming down for the kill.
Pool of London (Universal-International) is a British thriller with a nice eye for waterfront scenes, and some fresh criminal and noncriminal faces. When his freighter ties up in London, Seaman Bonar Colleano goes ashore with a pocketful of contraband narcotics. He is easily enlisted by a gang of jewel thieves, who want him to smuggle their loot to Rotterdam. But before his ship sails, a murder has been committed, and both the police and gangsters are on his trail.
While spinning out its cops & robbers plot, Pool of London takes a sober look at racial problems in London, and investigates the fascinating off-duty life of a vaudeville acrobat. Moira Lister and Joan Bowling play a pair of hair-pulling tarts with gutter realism, Renee Asherson suffers attractively as a good girl gone wrong, and Susan Shaw brings a Sunday-school wholesomeness to her brief encounter with a Negro sailor (Earl Cameron).
* An incident inspired by the plight of three-year-old Kathy Fiscus, whom rescuers found dead in a San Marino, Calif, well after trying for more than two days to reach her (TIME, April 18,1949)-