Tell It to the Marines (1926)

Originally posted to Facebook on 4/25/2018

Tell It to the Marines was our fifth film from 1926, and our third starring Lon Chaney. He co-stars with William Haines -- Chaney playing a Marine drill sergeant and Haines playing a young recruit. The obligatory scenes of training camp and difficult postings are present, though overall the film paints a rather rosy picture of Marine life. The female lead is a Navy nurse played by Eleanor Boardman, who is the focus of a sort of a love triangle. Chaney, refreshingly, has enough self-awareness to see that he is a generation older than her, and his attraction is relatively friendly and platonic. This is by far the most normal character we've seen Chaney play, though he is as charismatic as always. Haines, maybe surprisingly, is able to hold his own, and their interplay is the strongest feature of the movie. Haines also tries to impress Boardman, and takes her on a date where he keeps her much longer than promised, and refuses to drive her home, and is otherwise generally obnoxious. Of course she is publicly furious with him, but the movie decides that she in fact likes him after all. This is not necessarily an impossible development, but the movie seems to think it altogether natural -- which sadly is only the first of several errors of judgment. The second is telegraphed by the credits, which list Warner Oland as "Chinese Bandit Leader." Oland, of course, was a Swede who later played Charlie Chan in a series of movies throughout the thirties. But even before that moment could unfold, Chaney and Haines ship out, and are stationed on an island, presumably in the Pacific. There Haines meets and becomes involved with Carmel Myers (whom we'd earlier seen in Ben-Hur as an Egyptian who attempted to seduce Ramon Navarro), appearing in darkening makeup as an islander. These scenes are even worse than the later scenes with Oland, which themselves are not so great.

The frustrating thing about this film is that it has some very strong sequences with Chaney and Haines that are weighed down by the flaws described above. Chaney is at times a boss, a mentor, a rival, and a friend to Haines -- and Haines matches Chaney with a well-calibrated initial irreverence that eventually matures into a certain amount of depth. In the end it is too flawed to recommend, but it certainly has some of the pieces of a good movie.

Our film next week is Faust, our sixth from 1926, and our third directed by F.W. Murnau. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT