Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)
Directed by Preston Sturges
Having been discharged from the Marines for a hayfever condition before ever seeing action, Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith delays the return to his hometown, feeling that he is a failure. While in a moment of melancholy, he meets up with a group of Marines who befriend him and encourage him to return home to his mother by fabricating a story that he was wounded in battle with honorable discharge.
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What critics compared Hail the Conquering Hero to
More than any other Hollywood filmmaker, Russell has demonstrated a facility with nutty situations, screwball energy, and eccentric characters, the kind of facility that recalls Sturges in his Hail the Conquering Hero and Miracle of Morgan’s Creek heyday, the kind that approximates the manic farce of Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot together with the acerbic wit and sentiment of The Apartment.
I thought I even caught a whiff of one of my favorite films, Preston Sturges’s Hail the Conquering Hero, which also centers on a 4F who dreams of fighting in World War II — but doesn’t have a scientist to pump him full of supersizing chemicals.