Tanks a Million

In the early days of Hollywood, producer Hal Roach was Mack Sennett's chief rival as King of Comedy, eventually surpassing Sennett's success, thanks to the hugely popular work of Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chase, Laurel and Hardy, and in the 1930s, the "Our Gang" series. Roach's prodigious output included a handful of features, but comic shorts were his mainstay, primarily the "two-reelers" so popular with audiences of the silents and the early Depression years. By the late 30s, however, Hal Roach Studios was making fewer one and two-reel shorts and started turning out short feature films which ran slightly under sixty minutes. With his big stars Laurel and Hardy off on their own, Roach searched for new stars and subjects for his movie productions. One such actor was William Tracy, a young performer who had made an impression in supporting roles at other studios and had just played the lead in the film version of Milt Caniff's popular adventure comic strip Terry and the Pirates (1940). Capitalizing on the increasing interest in military subjects and the popularity of Army comedies such as Abbott and Costello's Buck Privates (1941), Roach made Tanks a Million (1941) and cast Tracy as Dorian "Dodo" Doubleday, a railroad information clerk with a photographic memory who is drafted into the service. His special talent enables him to memorize entire procedural manuals at a single glance, making him unpopular with his fellow recruits and putting him at odds with his gruff drill sergeant. But his commanding officers are impressed, quickly promoting him to head up a troublesome platoon, thereby setting the stage for a comic rivalry between him and his former sergeant. The formula proved such a hit with audiences that Roach characteristically turned Dodo and the supporting characters into series stars, putting them in ever more bumbling situations and, as the war progressed, incorporating such elements as German spies and Japanese submarines into the stories. Although peerless character actor James Gleason appeared in only the first two (the second entry was Hay Foot [1942]), Tracy and Joe Sawyer, as the ever-exasperated Sgt. Ames, made four more in the series during the war years. They were joined from time to time by such comic stalwarts as Noah Beery, Jr. and Margaret Dumont who is best known as Groucho Marx's comic foil in several Marx Brothers movies. All five films also featured popular supporting actor Frank Faylen, although he played a different character in each movie. After the war, attempts were made to revive the series, and installments appeared in 1948 (Here Comes Trouble), 1951 (As You Were) and 1952 (Mr. Walkie Talkie), with diminishing returns. Roach retired from the business in 1955, and his once-booming studio was bankrupt by the end of the decade. Tracy went into television, appearing in the series Terry and the Pirates, this time not as Caniff's title hero but as the character "Hotshot Charlie." He made one more film and the occasional TV appearance before his death at the age of 49 in 1967. Although only a fifty-one minute programmer, Tanks a Million received an Academy Award nomination for Edward Ward's score, earning a place in a nominee field for 1941 that included Suspicion (Franz Waxman), Sergeant York (Max Steiner), Citizen Kane (Bernard Herrmann), and the winner, Herrmann's score for The Devil and Daniel Webster. Ward was also nominated that same year for his score for the drama Cheers for Miss Bishop and the musical All-American Co-Ed. Director: Fred Guiol Producer: Hal Roach Screenplay: Edward E. Seabrook, Paul Girard Smith, Warren Wilson Cinematography: Robert Pittack Art Direction: Charles D. Hall Original Music: Edward Ward Cast: William Tracy (Sgt. Dodo Doubleday), James Gleason (Col. Spitfire Barkley), Noah Beery, Jr. (Charlie Cobb), Joe Sawyer (Sgt. Ames), Elyse Knox (Jeannie). BW-51m. by Rob Nixon