"DeserTBoB" wrote in message
...

Excellent post, interesting background stuff.

The movie supposedly didn't play well in the South (hmmmm...those
pesky red states again!) and also angered many WW II and Korean War
vets, knowing that Sinatra had dodged the bullet in WW II and had a
pretty cushy life on the home front...sort of like our current
president!

Bob Hope apparently conned his way into avoiding a similar label with his
USO touring. His being "too old" was a somewhat weak excuse. I looked into
this a while back. If he had been just one year younger he would have been
legally required to register for the draft. He was a former boxer and avid
golfer, certainly seemed physically fit enough. If he had genuinely wanted
to pull some strings and get in, I imagine he could have. Jimmy Stewart who
was only about 4 years younger than Hope was labeled 4-F and told to hit the
road because of his weight, but said "screw that", gained weight and saw
combat as a bomber pilot. Accounts I've seen indicated he was an excellent
airman and officer. I imagine he was motivated by machismo as much as by
patriotism, not wanting to be remembered as having been too scrawny for
military duty. No doubt it didn't hurt his career in the long run to have
stepped up to the plate like that when he didn't have to.

The prejudice angle had been played to the hilt a year
earlier in '57 with "Sayonara" and seemed to play universally well,
probably because it didn't involve a black player.

Somewhat humorous that though it was about a white woman who had married a
black man, they managed to go through the whole flick without a black face
ever being shown.