Main Cast: Andy Griffith, Felicia Farr, Walter Matthau, Joe Mantell
Release Year: 1958
Country: US
Run Time: 111 minutes
Plot
In his third starring feature, Onionhead, Andy Griffith plays a character somewhere inbetween the bucolic ingenuousness of Will Stockdale in No Time for Sergeants and the hotheaded truculence of Lonesome Rhodes in A Face in the Crowd. Griffith is cast as Al Woods, a college student majoring in girls and parties. When his grades drop and his relationship with girlfiend Jo Hill (Erin O'Brien) sours, Al joins the Coast Guard as assistant cook on the SS Periwinkle, fully expecting to sit out WW2 in peace and quiet. Instead, he runs afoul of navy protocol in general and mess officer Red Wildoe (Walter Matthau) in particular. In or out of trouble, Al remains a stubborn individualist, and it is this quality that attracts him to Wildoe's erstwhile fiancee Stella (Felica Farr). Strong support is provided by Roscoe Karns as Al Woods' crusty father, James Gregory as the skipper of thePeriwinkle, and Joey Bishop is the inevitable Brooklynite. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
A middling but mildly enjoyable little film, Onionhead can't seem to make up its mind about a lot of things. Is it a comedy or a drama? Is its main character likeable or a lug? Should we concentrate on the lead role played by Andy Griffith or shift focus to Walter Matthau's supporting character, who Matthau makes hard to look away from? At times, Onionhead feels like No Time for Sergeants if 90% of the laughs were removed. This wouldn't be such a problem if the lack o comedy were compensated for by an incisive character study or a compelling storyline, but Onionhead's people are not particularly deep (and often not very involving) and its plot meanders hither and yon. Griffith is great in the part, even if much of it is a retread of his Sergeants character with a slice of A Face in the Crowd's Lonesome Rhodes thrown in, but he can't compete with the young Matthau, who still had a significant of "young actor hunger" at this time and mercilessly, if often quietly, steals his scenes away from the star. Norman Taurog's direction is adequate, if unexceptional, and there are good turns from Felicia Farr, James Gregory and Joey Bishop. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Onionhead is a 1958 movie set on a US Coast Guard ship during World War II starring Andy Griffith, Felicia Farr, Walter Matthau, and Erin O'Brien. The film was written by Nelson Gidding and Weldon Hill from Hill's novel, directed by Norman Taurog, and was such a notorious flop that it drove Griffith, who had enjoyed enormous success in A Face in the Crowd and No Time for Sergeants, into television, according to Griffith's videotaped interview in the Archive of American Television. Weldon Hill is the pseudonym of William R. Scott, a native Oklahoman who based the novel on his own World War II service in the U.S. Coast Guard. Griffith had had such success with his previous service comedy, "No Time for Sergeants," that this was an attempt to cash in on it. It was sold to the public as an uproarious comedy but actually had considerably darker themes. The picture also features James Gregory, Rat Pack comedian Joey Bishop, and Claude Akins.
