the arbiter of wit, sex, and good times
by Douglas Messerli
E. Richard Schayer (screenplay), George W. Hill (director) Tell It
to the Marines / 1926
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Although William Haines is nominally the star
of George W. Hill’s Tell It to the Marines almost every critic or
observer who has commented about this ostensibly heterosexual film, declares
that it is Lon Chaney’s movie, primarily because of how obnoxious Haines’
character appears to be. The critic for the Silents Are Golden site’s comments are
typical of the general feelings about this film:
“While not the strongest story line, the picture, nevertheless,
garnered almost universal praise— and still does today. It was MGM's second
highest grossing picture for the year with worldwide box office receipts of
$1.6 million. It is most certainly a brilliant performance by Lon Chaney, and,
as such, he is the reason the film has stood the test of time, and, in this
reviewer's opinion, must have been the driving force behind the film's success
in 1927…. Chaney biographer Michael F. Blake noted, ‘The film remains one of
his finest performances and demonstrates that he could be a serious actor
without any make-up.’
One can go on and on with
laudatory prose about Chaney—he is deservedly one of the most revered actors in
cinema history. However, equal screen time (if not more) is given to William
Haines as the wisecracking young recruit "Skeet" Burns. Haines
excelled at this type of characterization—the obnoxiously egotistical cut-up
who takes nothing seriously and, therefore, ends up getting himself in trouble.
… Haines certainly plays the cocky, arrogant and
obnoxious part to the hilt in Tell it to the Marines. Although he
deserves credit for filling the role admirably, author Richard Schayer's
creation leans so much toward the obnoxious that it is difficult to muster any
compassion for Burns when the story calls for audience sympathy.”
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There is no question that actor Haines
pushes his character’s “Skeet” Burns’ persona to the limits, not only abusing
the travel plan in which the military pays the way to transport it new
volunteers to their location of training by taking advantage of the free
transportation from his hometown in Kansas to the San Diego Naval base only to
escape military induction in order to haunt the race tracks in nearby Tijuana;
but when he loses, he returns, using the Marines as a method of survival. He
disobeys and evades nearly all of Sergeant O’Hara’s orders, slips away from the
military base, basically going AWOL later in the film when his group is
stationed on Tondo Island, ignores the pleading of his shanghaied “date” Navy
nurse Norma Dale (Eleanor Boardman) to take her home, and comes close to raping
her. He is clearly misogynistic and incorrigible regarding nearly all systems
of authority. He most certainly, as several commentators have described him, is
“a wise guy” in need of a comeuppance.
Yet I’d argue that he is
no more cocky or arrogant than many silent film heroes such as Fatty Arbuckle,
Charles Chaplin, and even Buster Keaton when it comes to authoritarian control;
and Haines belongs to a long tradition of anti-disciplinarian behavior that
gets most thoroughly expressed in a movie such as Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H
(1970).
There was a reason why,
year after year, Haines was one of the leading box office draws and MGM’s
biggest star. In a time when films openly challenged the bourgeois notions of
family and hearth, openly gay actor Haines stood as a symbol to some of a break
with a government and society out of touch—particularly with those of the
“roaring 20s” generation and even men who had returned with a broader view of
society from World War I—with their contemporary concerns. The Prohibition laws
and the still basic Victorian approach to policing by many police forces,
prisons, and local governments were appropriate targets, for these individuals
and others, by figures such as Haines, about whom William J. Mann in his
important study of Hollywood gays, Behind the Screen, writes:
“His [Haines’] unique screen characterization was merely an extension
of his real-life personality: manic, witty, and irreverent. Haines’ humor and
values had been honed among the drag queens and gay sophisticates of New York’s
Greenwich Village: that what comes through on-screen, and indeed, what made him
so popular in the 1920s. …Haines’ campy city slickers were embraced by
moviegoers precisely for [his] difference. His queerness, in effect, is what
made him box-office gold. He’d ad-lib on the set, with writers inserting his
quips as intertitles. His campy asides and comments became part of his screen
persona, a gay sensibility at work within the confines of the studio system.”
Even if throughout Tell
It to the Marines Haines’ character “Skeet” is seen constantly chasing the
girls, particularly nurse Norma, a woman beloved also by Sergeant O’Hara, we
recognize
that—even if he might win the girl by the end of the film, as he does
in this movie—he was still a wild card even after making significant changes,
and stood fast as not truly being the marrying kind.
When asked early in the film
by Marine officers whether he’s ever been married, “Skeet” quips, laughing and
observing (through an intertitle card) “Who me? I’m America’s Sweetheart!”—almost
breaking through pretense of the screen in the truth of his statement.
Mann describes him as
swishing a lot throughout the film. I can’t say that I would describe his
insistent maneuvers to get around his Sergeant’s injunctions as representing a
“swishy” manner, “behaving more like a woman rather than a man,” but “Skeet
does seem to attract the Navy sailors in a way that he did in real life as
well.
At one point, as he sails
with his Marine crew to their first off-base location, he meets up with a hunky
sailor going down the narrow circular staircase just as he begins to attempt to
go up. The following conversation suggests a kind of immediate gay link-up
between the two, rejected by Skeet because of his supposedly “macho” desires
(he is, after all, supposed to be attracted only to women).
Bill Duff: Say, Marine... you almost ran into a murder!
Pvt. George Robert 'Skeet' Burns: Peddle your papers, Handsome! I'm
poison to Gobs!
Bill Duff: And I'm a great cure for poison, Mr. Leather Neck!
Pvt. George Robert 'Skeet' Burns: Say, Baby... I think I'll declare
war on you!
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Sergeant O’Hara quickly
breaks up the fight, but suggests that if Skeet really wants a fight, why not
do it in the ring, without telling his soldier that Duff is the Navy
heavyweight champion.
That betrayal is one of
many that Skeet later points to in later describing O’Hara as a
“double-crosser.”
The Marines, bloodied and
done in, carry the day, but when Skeet, appreciative of his saviors, attempts
to shake O’Hara’s hand, he socks him in the jaw for disobeying him and putting
the entire mission in jeopardy.
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These two incidents, among
others, convince Skeet that O’Hara is arranging so that he can win over nurse Norma.
But we know that Norma’s real reason for rejecting Skeet is probably closer to
being racist, just as, sadly, are the scenes with the Tondo natives. Dale has
heard, through gossip, about Skeet’s supposed courting of the native girl, and
refuses now to even talk to him or write. It’s clear that despite her ability
to accept even his untoward behavior to her, she cannot tolerate his
interracial involvements with a native woman. One suspects that had it simply
been another nurse, she might have forgiven him, but with Zaya he has gone too
far. As she writes her insistent courtier: "I'm returning your letters
unopened. Your affair at Tondo Island is common gossip and I thoroughly resent
your writing me after that. Norma Dale."
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Later in Shanghai, the
two men meet up with Norma once again, she refusing to even acknowledge Skeet.
In a restaurant with O’Hara, she implores him, “Don't you think I'm right to
never see him again?" But even here, where he could fairly bad mouth
Skeet, the Sergeant demonstrates what a softie he truly is: "Never? Are
you sure that's what you mean?" When she insists that is precisely what
she means, O'Hara suggests, "I think you're turning him down just when he
needs you most."
It is these events that
make Chaney as O’Hara such a loveable figure compared with the impetuous
selfishness of Haines’ character.
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The two men come together again, this time to release the nurses, now
located in an isolate Chinese city where disease has spread, from the control
of warrior bandits. It ends, as such films inevitably must, with O’Hara being
wounded ordering the others to retreat, while this time Skeet stays the course
and fights on the save Norma and the other nurses as well as O’Hara.
And accordingly, by film’s end with Skeet’s four-year enlistment finally
over, he and Norma buy a ranch, now inviting O’Hara to join them as a
“partner,” whatever that might mean. If nothing else it implies a kind a
polyamorous adventure way before such things were common knowledge. The veteran
obviously recognizes, however, that he and the Marine Corps were made for one
another.
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As Skeet turns to go, he too
has second thoughts and returns to the base, obviously ready to live out a few
more years with his male companion in arms instead of his female partner in bed.
No one else might have
gotten away with such an obvious switch after having pretended to fight so hard
for the hand of the female lead in a movie.
But Haines could get
away it, at least throughout the 1920s, because he was authentic and honest
about his sexuality. Toto le Grand, the nom de plume of The Gay Cookbook author
and former California chorus boy Lou Rand Hogan (born Louis Randall), mentions
seeing Haines out at night being “crude, brash, and rowdy!” just as were many
of his characters.
Today, in a frankly more
conservative era, we praise the gruff but loving representative of duty, while
dismissing the arbiter of wit, sex, and good times who lived a life free of
bluff.
Los Angeles, March 5, 2024
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2024).
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