Main Cast: Cary Grant, Tony Curtis, Joan O'Brien, Dina Merrill, Gene Evans
Release Year: 1959
Country: US
Run Time: 120 minutes
Plot
Rear Admiral Matt Sherman (Cary Grant) visits the submarine Sea Tiger on the morning of its decommissioning and reminisces about his time as the first commander of the boat, in 1941. Three days after Pearl Harbor, the sub is damaged during an enemy air raid in the Philippines; rather than abandoning her, Sherman and his chiefs refloat the boat. He's forced to accept the services of Lt. (jg) Nick Holden (Tony Curtis), who has no sea experience. Sherman appoints Holden -- a born conniver, deal-maker, and scrounger (his motto: "In confusion, there is profit") -- as supply officer, and through a series of burglaries and petty thefts he gets the Sea Tiger seaworthy again. Up to this point, the movie is an increasingly amusing service comedy, akin to the lighter moments of Mr. Roberts, running on Grant's wry exasperation and Curtis's cool arrogance, coupled with Arthur O'Connell's periodic sardonic yet optimistic jabs at their situation and Gavin MacLeod's fidgety nervousness. The Sea Tiger puts to sea ahead of the Japanese with a quintet of stranded army nurses aboard. The film shifts to a new level of humor as the officers and crew try to cope with living in close quarters with five attractive women in their midst. Grant gives a very witty performance as a man who is both exasperated by the situation he is in, having to adjust his masculinity to keep it from clashing with the feminine sensibilities of his guests, and also trying to control the mating urges of his men, starting with Holden, who can't stay away from Lt. Duran (Dina Merrill). Complicating matters more is Grant's awareness that the Sea Tiger is a "virgin" -- she has never engaged the enemy, but when they finally do, the accident-prone Lt. Crandall (Joan O'Brien) causes their torpedo to miss a tanker and sink a truck (probably the funniest sight gag in the movie). The boat also gets an accidental coat of pink paint when their supply of red and white runs low, and ends up carrying several Filipino families -- including two pregnant women. Since neither the Japanese nor the Americans officially has a pink submarine, the Sea Tiger ends uphunted by both sides and come under attack by an American destroyer. That's where the women's presence becomes a godsend. The movie ends 18 years later, with Holden a serious career navy man and responsible father, married to Duran, and Grant married to Crandall, who is as accident prone as ever. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Review
In order to properly appreciate Blake Edwards' Operation Petticoat, or understand why it has endured in popularity for more than 40 years, one must first accept that it's a much more complicated movie than it seems. For starters, though it is set in December of 1941 and January of 1942, its plot and sensibilities are really much more reflective of postwar America; and it's also two very different kinds of comedy within one movie, each overlaying the other and working in tandem during the last 70 minutes of its two-hour running time. The first half of Operation Petticoat is an amusing service comedy that builds slowly and subtly in its intensity, playing off of Cary Grant's wry persona and his character's exasperation (really a very slow burn) over the situation in which he finds himself, stuck with a damaged submarine in the middle of a war that broke out only days earlier; and the Tony Curtis character's mix of foppish ne'er-do-well and knowing conniver/scrounger. That half of the movie is something seen before, albeit not done in quite as relaxed a manner, in the comical elements of John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy's Mister Roberts (1954) and Richard Quine's Operation Mad Ball (1957). Then, in the second half of the movie, the stranded army nurses come aboard the submarine Sea Tiger, and suddenly, in the wink of an eye, Operation Petticoat switches gears as director, script, and cast all open the throttle at once -- all of its cylinders start firing, and the movie blossoms into a much more complex and daring piece of entertainment and humor, concerning the close-quarter mingling of the sexes. This being a 1959 movie, it was impossible for Russell Harlan's camera not to linger on the voluptuous physiques of Dina Merrill, Joan O'Brien et al -- audiences expected it and, indeed, the studio making the movie would have demanded it; but those shots, and the dialogue and plot developments that go with them, linger more than they leer, and come with a fairly sophisticated purpose. The whole second half of Operation Petticoat is a sly look at late 1950's concepts of male and female sexuality, reveling in them on the one hand and cheerfully satirizing them on the other. Faced with sharing very tight quarters with a group of nubile women, Grant's and Curtis's characters (and, to a lesser degree, Arthur O'Connell's engine room chief and Dick Sargent's junior officer, and the rest of the crew) must grope -- and this reviewer uses that term in the least sexual manner possible -- around the recesses of their own masculinity and its motivations, to come to terms with their new living situation. In many ways, the movie brushes up against the same material targeted by Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (also starring Curtis), with Joan O'Brien furnishing the iconic female form (and cute, if less distinctive, personality) that Marilyn Monroe provided in the Wilder movie. The movie has a good time tweaking the more frivolous sides of femininity as it was understood in 1959; it also targets several aspects of male sexuality of the period, most importantly the misogynist mentalities of older men embodied by Grant's and O'Connell's characters, and their distrust of women, as well as the "Playboy magazine"-style hedonism embodied by Curtis's character -- it even manages to work in a gentle dig at the go-getter, success-at-any-price ideas that afflicted America in the 1950's. In the end, the Sea Tiger's loopy, halting ride across the Pacific becomes a much smoother, more subtle, and enjoyable ride for the viewer, who can absorb Operation Petticoat at its most superficial, or find amusement at deeper and more serious levels. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Arthur O'Connell - Sam Tostin; Virginia Gregg - Maj. Edna Hayward; Robert Simon - Capt. J. B. Henderson; Robert Gist - Watson; Gavin MacLeod - Ernest Hunkle; George Dunn - Prophet; Dick Crockett - Harmon; Madlyn Rhue - Lt. Claire Reid; Marion Ross - Lt. Ruth Colfax; Clarence Lung - Ramon; Frankie Darro - Dooley; Robert Hoy - Reiner; Nicky Blair - Kraus; John Morley - Williams; Hal Baylor - M.P. Sergeant; William Bryant - Crewman; Malcolm Cassell; Francis de Sales - Captain Kress; Vince Deadrick, Jr.; Alan Dexter - Navy Chief; Preston Hanson - Lieutenant Colonel Simpson; Harry Harvey, Jr. - Soldier; Robert Keys; Joseph Kim - Filipino; James Lanphier - Lieutenant Commander Daly; Nelson Leigh - Admiral Koenig; Leon Lontoc - Filipino Farmer; Alan Scott - Chief of Demolition Crew; Nino Tempo - Crewman; Robert Gibson - Seaman; Dale Cummings - M.P.'s; Glenn Jacobson - Control Talker; Bob Stratton - Marine Lieutenant; Dick Sargent - Stovall
Credit
Alexander Golitzen - Art Director, Robert Emmet Smith - Art Director, Bill Thomas - Costume Designer, Frank Shaw - First Assistant Director, Blake Edwards - Director, Frank Gross - Editor, Ted Kent - Editor, Henry Mancini - Composer (Music Score), David Rose - Composer (Music Score), Bud Westmore - Makeup, Russell Harlan - Cinematographer, Clifford Stine - Cinematographer, Robert Arthur - Producer, Oliver Emert - Set Designer, Russell A. Gausman - Set Designer, Leslie I. Carey - Sound/Sound Designer, Joseph J. Stone - Screen Story, Paul King - Screen Story, Maurice Richlin - Screenwriter, Stanley Shapiro - Screenwriter
The film tells in flashback form the story of a fictional World War II American submarineUSS Sea Tiger, sunk pierside in the Philippine Islands during the opening days of World War II. Operation Petticoat follows the adventures and tribulations of the sub's skipper (Grant) and his crew (including Curtis as a deviously mercenary supply officer), as they first try to repair the sub and then reach Australia for the necessary refit. The voyage includes various detours along the way, including the acquisition of a group of stranded female Armynurses, an attempt to sink a Japanese ship, and a hurried stopover to overhaul and repaint the sub which quickly goes awry.
The film is told in flashback form as a recollection of RADM Matt Sherman (Grant), the fictional Commander of Submarine Forces Pacific in 1959. His is the story of the fictitious World War II American submarineUSS Sea Tiger, which he has boarded early that morning in 1959, prior to its departure for the scrapyard. Having served as the first commanding officer of Sea Tiger, he takes a seat in his former captain's stateroom and begins reading his personal log, beginning with Sea Tiger coming under Japanese attack while pierside at the U.S. Naval Base in Cavite during the opening days of the Pacific War.
The Sea Tiger is sunk at the pier following an air attack early in the war. Her captain, then-LCDR Matt Sherman, and his crew, begin efforts to repair her. At this point, a new officer shows up. LTJG Nick Holden is a line officer and former admiral's aide with minimal sea duty experience. Holden, a self-styled "idea man," signs on as supply officer because he wants to get out of the Philippines before the Japanese arrive, and because he thinks he can work a better deal for himself in Australia. To obtain the needed supplies, Holden demonstrates considerable skill at scavenging and con artistry, skills learned in his impoverished childhood.
With the help of Holden and his deputy, a Marine sergeant recently jailed for misappropriating military supplies, the crew are able to procure the supplies needed to make basic repairs to the sub and then sail it for Australia, in hope that the repairs can be completed there. Holden and the captain come into conflict several times due to Holden's attitude toward the Navy in general: it seems that he became an officer not to serve his country, but to escape poverty and find a wealthy spouse. And indeed, he is engaged to a wealthy woman back home.
Along the way they pick up a contingent of female Army nurses stranded on another Philippine island. LTJG Holden sets his sights on one of the nurses, 2LT Duran, presumably hoping to have a little fun before he gets married. Meanwhile, LCDR Sherman has a series of embarrassing encounters with the very well-endowed but clumsy 2LT Crandall. This reaches its climax when Crandall arrives in the conning tower when the sub is attempting to torpedo an enemy tanker, causing the torpedo to miss the ship and obliterate a truck parked on the beach.
At the next stop, at which the crew are expecting to spend New Years, Holden sets up a casino, which he uses to get the men on the island to trade usable parts for chips. he also steals a pig from a farmer, hoping to throw a New Years' celebration for the men. When he is caught, Sherman is able to exact a measure of retribution for Holden's obnoxious behavior by forcing Holden to trade away most of his extraneous possessions for the stolen animal.
Sherman, Holden and the crew are eventually forced to continue on their journey with the sub painted pink after plans for a quick re-paint of the sub go awry. Not enough red lead or white lead undercoat primer paint is available to paint the entire sub either color, and so all the available paint of both colors is mixed together. The plan is to paint the sub gray after New Years celebration is completed, but the Japanese attack in the middle of it, forcing the Sea Tiger to make an early departure.
The pink sub becomes a target for an American destroyer force whose commanding officer is convinced that it must be Japanese. Grant saves the sub by firing the nurses' bras, panties and nylons out a torpedo tube. The garments rise to the surface, 2LT Crandall's bra is snagged by a grappling hook and taken aboard a destroyer, and it is soon evident to the destroyer crew that the submarine is American.
The story ends with RADM Sherman aboard Sea Tiger on the morning he has had to sign the final order directing her decommissioning and eventual scrapping. He is met by the current commanding officer of Sea Tiger, now-CDR Nick Holden, as he and his wife (the former 2LT Duran) and their sons arrive at the pier. Holden asks the admiral if there is any reprieve for Sea Tiger's fate. Reluctantly, he says there is none...but he adds that a new nuclear-powered submarine is about to come off the ways...also named Sea Tiger...and that the new Sea Tiger is Holden's next command. Sherman's wife (the former 2LT Crandall) arrives shortly thereafter with their daughters. Running late, the ever clumsy former Lieutenant Crandall/Mrs. Sherman manages to bump the family station wagon into RADM Sherman's staff car, which then locks bumpers with a Navy bus immediately in front of it. The bus then drives off with the staff car behind, with Sherman's chief petty officer/driver yelling and chasing after it. Sherman, by now used to his wife's clumsiness, assures her that they'll stop it at the gate. Holden, standing on Sea Tiger's sail, chuckles at the humor of it all as he maneuvers the sub away from the pier on her final voyage. Sherman looks longingly and humorously as the sub sails away, still belching smoke from its troublesome #1 engine.
Historical basis
Some of the plot points of the movie were based on real-life incidents. Most notable were scenes set at the opening of WW-II, based on the actual sinking of the submarine USS Sealion (SS-195), sunk at the pier at Cavite Navy Yard in the Philippines. Commander Sherman's letter to the supply department on the inexplicable lack of toilet paper, based on an actual letter to the supply department of Mare Island Naval Shipyard by Lieutenant Commander James Wiggin Coe of the submarine Skipjack (SS-184), and the need to paint a submarine pink, due to the lack of enough red lead or white lead undercoat paint.
This film was a huge box office hit, making it the #3 moneymaker of 1960, earning $6,800,000.[1]
1977 television series
The movie was adapted as an ABC-TV series which ran from Sept. 17, 1977 – Aug. 10, 1979.[2] Initially starring John Astin in Cary Grant's role of Lieutenant Commander Sherman, the TV series was probably most notable for the casting of Tony Curtis' daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, in the role of Lieutenant Duran, the female nurse that the Curtis character has married by the end of the original movie. Most of the cast was replaced for the show's second season, a decision that led to low ratings and cancellation.[citation needed] Only 24 episodes of the series were produced in total.
^Steinberg, Cobbett (1980). Film Facts. New York: Facts on File, Inc.. p. 23. ISBN0-87196-313-2. When a film is released late in a calendar year (October to December), its income is reported in the following year's compendium, unless the film made a particularly fast impact (p. 17). The #1 film of 1960 was Ben-Hur ($17,300,000), and the #2 film was Alfred Hitchcock'sPsycho ($8,500,000).
^Brooks, Tim; Marsh, Earle (Oct. 1995) [1979] (trade paperback). The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows: 1946-Present (Sixth ed.). New York: Ballantine Books, a Division of Random House, Inc.. p. 780. ISBN0-345-39736-3.
