TL and I were watching, "They were Expendable" with John Wayne and Donna Reed, and it went swell. Swell was the word in America before hippies all went "cool" after "daddy o' beatniks .......whatever.
The movie was good as it is about the American military in the Philippines getting moved out by Japan and it focuses on PT boats. I like PT boats as they had a great deal of firepower and were what Thomas Jefferson probably thought a gunboat should be, unlike his contraptions which capsized when the cannon was fired and nearly lost the War of 1812.
Barring John Kennedy should have faced court martial for losing his boat in World War II........that is another story I will not digress into.
So the show ends with John Wayne on a transport with his commander and they leave the swabbies behind to walk on the beach with guns. No one knows what happened to nurse Donna Reed and it just ends with General MacArthur saying "We will return" when it was "I shall return".
It is Hollywood so we do not really care about the facts.
I immediately not liking the ending as TL did not started a complete version in THEY WERE EXTENDABLE. See in this nurse Donna Reed was not in the hills or in a prison camp, but instead while John was off building a gunboat Navy, Donna was refusing to surrender.
On the night Bataan fell or something, she jumped into the water with all the other nurses, with scalpels in hand, and swam for the big islands.
Enroute, they were attacked by saltwater crocodiles and in a harrowing fight, killed the big lizards and swam ashore all wet and nurse unform clinging.
Donna being in charge, next stormed a Jap platoon and killed everyone with their own weapons. The nurses then fought their way through the Jap lines to the hills, where they set up Camp Libby Custer.
Nightly Donna would go out and kill bushels of Japanese soldiers. She killed so many that the foreskins she cut off, made the girls a very nice tent to both eat, lounge, sleep and plan military operations.
Meanwhile John Wayne was in San Diego building PT boats to rejoin MacArthur.
So Donna had her Jap foreskin tent, and next she led her girls to attack the Jap air base, to which they grabbed the Zeroes and went aloft and straifed and sunk numerous Japanese warships, before they each belly landed in the ocean, jumped in the water, fought a bunch more saltwater crocodiles, swam to shore, got on the beach and then in clingy clothes, made their way back to the foreskin headquarters.
Meanwhile John Wayne was in Australia delivering PT boats to deliver to MacArthur.
Next Donna and the girls, attacked a Japanese base where they cut off so many foreskins, that they could build a second base of operations from which Douglas MacArthur could operate from.
Meanwhile John and Doug were fighting their way in PT boats back to the Philippines and Donna.
Things were getting desperate by this time for Donna, as their clothing was worn out, and they had to wear little Japper military uniforms which were quite skimpy on them, but it was good they had the foreskin tents to keep them from sunburn.
Meanwhile MacArthur lands. He and John join Donna and the girls to rescue the POW's on the Philippines. John guns his boat and it glides 30 miles inland where Donna is pinned down. Thereby John fires his torpedoes and blows up a Jap division, and they both charge the lines, and with foreskins flying everywhere, the POW's are set free, as the movie closes with John and Donna holding each other with one hand and in the other they have Springfield 1903's as Douglas flies over waving with that big USA star on his plane.
That is how They were Expendable should have ended as no one likes Donna Reed unaccounted for and John Wayne just following FDR retreat orders. That is how I would make movies.......and none of that machine gun shooting to make Donna's boobs bounce as this is Donna Reed and there is no graphic things going on here as she is an American who does not need that kind of stuff to sell a movie.
So any way, that is what the real movie was, and am sure it was shot that way, but they just did not have enough room with all that damn singing and stupid stuff being included in it, like dinners and worrying about fixing boats or visiting dying Soldiers.
Do more for morale in showing Donna slicing off foreskins to cheer the boys up.
nuff said
agtG
