The Americanization of Emily is a 1964 American comedy-drama war film directed by Arthur Hiller and written by Paddy Chayefsky, loosely adapted from the novel of the same name by William Bradford Huie. Set in London in 1944 during World War II, in the weeks leading up to D-Day, the black-and-white film stars James Garner, Julie Andrews and Melvyn Douglas and features James Coburn, Joyce Grenfell and Keenan Wynn. Both Garner[1][2] and Andrews[3][2] consider it their favorite of the films they appeared in.
Plot
Lieutenant Commander Charlie Madison (James Garner) is a "dog-robber," a personable but conniving personal assistant to American Admiral William Jessup (Melvyn Douglas). His job is to keep his boss and other high ranking officers supplied with luxuries and amiable English women.
Under stress since the death of his wife, Jessup cracks up while devising a plan to prevent the Navy from being overshadowed in the D-Day invasion by the Army and its Air Corps, which in his mind could lead to a unification of the services and the "scrapping" of the Navy. In his unbalanced state, Jessup comes up with a grand idea: "The first dead man on Omaha Beach must be a sailor." He commissions a film to document that fact. The casualty would then be buried in a "Tomb of the Unknown Sailor."
The bemused Charlie, meanwhile, has fallen in love with a driver from the motor pool, war widow Emily Barham (Julie Andrews), who has lost her husband, brother and father in the war. No longer being able to bear the thought of losing another loved one, Emily finds the self-admitted coward Charlie irresistible.
Despite his best efforts to get out of it, Charlie and his unexpectedly gung-ho friend, Lieutenant Commander "Bus" Cummings (James Coburn), find themselves and a film crew with the combat engineers hitting the beach in the first wave. When he tries to retreat back to safety, Charlie is chased forward by a disgusted Bus brandishing a pistol. Charlie is killed by a German shell, making HIM the first American to be killed on Omaha Beach. A photograph of Charlie amid exploding artillery shells is plastered across hundreds of newspapers and Life magazine, turning the coward into a hero.
Jessup, having recovered from his breakdown, sincerely regrets his part in Charlie's demise. But he remains ready to use it in support of the Navy before a Senate committee in Washington. Emily is devastated at losing yet another man she loves to the war, but she pulls herself together. Bus is happy and proud to have created a hero.
Then comes unexpected news: Charlie isn't dead, he's in an evacuation hospital in England, having been returned from France. The only wound he received was from Bus's pistol. Charlie is so furious that he threatens to tell the reporters and the entire world the unvarnished truth of what happened on that beach. Emily convinces him to instead stay true to his coward's code.
Cast
Cast notes:
- Sharon Tate had an uncredited role as "Beautiful Girl".
Soundtrack
The film introduced the song "Emily", performed by Julie Andrews. The song was later recorded by Barbra Streisand for The Movie Album (2003).
Awards nominations
The film was nominated for two Academy Awards:[4]
Comparison with the novel
The movie is based on William Bradford Huie's 1959 book of the same name[5].
The New York Times ran a brief news item mention of William Bradford Huie's novel prior to its publication[6], but never reviewed the novel,[7] although in 1963 Paddy Chayefsky's development of the novel into a screenplay was found worthy of note.[8]
Chayefsky's adaptation, while retaining the title, characters, situation, background and many specific plot incidents, nevertheless told a very different story. "I found the book, which is serious in tone, essentially a funny satire, and that's how I'm treating it."[8]
The screenplay's theme of cowardice as a virtue has no parallel in the novel; in fact, the novel does not mention cowardice at all.
The screenplay implies, but never explicitly explains what is meant by the term "Americanization." The novel uses "Americanized" to refer to a woman who accepts, as a normal condition of wartime, the exchange of her sexual favors for gifts of rare wartime commodities. Thus, in reply to the question "has Pat been Americanized," a character answers:
"Thoroughly. She carries a diaphragm in her kitbag. She has seen the ceilings of half the rooms in the Dorchester [hotel]. She asks that it be after dinner: she doesn't like it on an empty stomach. She admits she's better after steak than after fish. She requires that it be in a bed, and that the bed be in Claridge's, the Savoy, or the Dorchester."[5]
This theme runs throughout the novel. Another character says "We operate just like a whorehouse... except we don't sell it for cash. We swap it for Camels and nylons and steak and eggs and lipstick... this dress... came from Saks Fifth Avenue in the diplomatic pouch." Emily asks Jimmy "am I behaving like a whore?" Jimmy's reply is: "Whoring is a peacetime activity."[5]
The screenplay uses Hershey bars to symbolize the luxuries enjoyed by Americans and their "Americanized' companions; the novel uses strawberries rather than chocolate bars, in a parallel way. In his first dinner with Emily, he orders the waiter to bring strawberries. "She protested that they were too forbidden, too expensive." Jimmy convinces her to accept them by arguing that "If you don't eat them, they'll be eaten by one of these expense-account correspondents." Later, she asks Jimmy, "If I fall in love with you, how can I know whether I love you for yourself or for the strawberries?"[5]
The novel briefly mentions that Emily's mother, Mrs. Barham, has been mentally affected by wartime stress, but she is not a major character. There is no mention of her self-deception or pretense that her husband and son are still alive. The movie contains a long scene between Charlie and Mrs. Barham, full of eloquent antiwar rhetoric, in which Charlie breaks down Mrs. Barham's denial and reduces her to tears while nevertheless insisting that he has performed an act of kindness. The novel has no parallel to this scene.
In the movie, Charlie is comically unprepared to make the documentary movie demanded by Admiral Jessup, and is assisted only a bumbling and drunken serviceman played by Keenan Wynn. In the book, Charlie has, in fact, been a PR professional in civilian life, takes the assignment seriously, and leads a team of competent cinematographers.
Notes
- ^ Boedeke, Hal (July 29, 2001). "Easygoing Garner Gets Nice Salute: Turner Classic Movies Honors the Star with a Review of His Career and by Showing 18 of His Movies.". The Orlando Sentinel. http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.newsbank.com:NewsBank:ORLB&rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=0ED904064C0FA190&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated4&req_dat=11ECDBF131F44C689BB0EDBA11D99EE0.
- ^ a b James Garner of Charlie Rose, ~6' from beginning
- ^ Blank, Ed. Andrews as Maria a result of 'happy circumstances' . Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. 17 November 2005.
- ^ "NY Times: The Americanization of Emily". NY Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/2073/The-Americanization-of-Emily/awards. Retrieved 2008-12-25.
- ^ a b c d Huie, William Bradford. The Americanization of Emily. E. F. Dutton & Co., Inc.. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 59-5060. "'Has Pat been Americanized?' ... 'She carries a diaphragm in her kit-bag'", p. 23; Strawberries "too forbidden, too expensive," p. 31; "this dress... came from Saks Fifth Avenue in the diplomatic pouch," p. 54; "Whoring is a peacetime activity," p. 102; "how can I know whether I love you for yourself or for the strawberries?" p. 104.
- ^ "Books—Authors," The New York Times, July 14, 1959, p. 27: "'The Americanization of Emily, William Bradford Huie's new novel, will be published Aug. 12 by Dutton.... It gives a picture of the war in London in 1944 as carried on from hotel suites with the help of good food, good liquor, expensive presents, and expensive-looking women."
- ^ Online search of NYT archives for "huie" and "emily"
- ^ a b Weiler, A. H. "Movie Panorama from a Local Vantage Point, The New York Times, April 7, 1963, p. X15
External links
