‘Thousand Men and Baby’ Sails Into Holiday Hearts

CBS programmers might as well go ahead and reserve a slot to repeat “A Thousand Men and a Baby” at holiday time next year, and the year after that--and on and on--because what they have here is a story so irresistible that it deserves to become a classic.

Premiering Sunday night at 9, this movie combines several of America’s best-loved genres--war story, holiday heart-warmer, family drama and baby-in-peril throat-catcher--into one neatly gift-wrapped package. Sure, it’s saccharine. Yes, its storytelling is flawed here and there. But if you’re as soft a touch as this viewer, you’ll need to keep more than a box of tissues at your side. A pile of super-absorbent beach towels would be more like it.

Based on a true story, “A Thousand Men and a Baby” unfolds in the immediate aftermath of the Korean War. An aircraft carrier is kept in the region, and while at anchor at Inchon, its surgeon, Lt. Hugh Keenan (Richard Thomas), is pulled aside by the ship’s man of the cloth, Father Edward O’Riley (Jonathan Banks), to examine an abandoned Amerasian baby.

The good father, in league with the nun (Doris Roberts) who runs the local orphanage, angles to get baby Danny aboard the carrier for medical attention. Their plan is to so endear Danny to the crew and its skipper, Capt. John Hayward (“Major Dad” himself, Gerald McRaney), that no one can bear to leave him behind. Soon, crew members are stacked in doorways to sneak a peek at the little cutie, and one of them declares, “The kid’s got a thousand uncles.”

Come to think of it, “A Thousand Uncles” would be a much better title than this one, with its pointless allusion to a certain sappy grouping of men-and-a-baby movies.

Written by Richard Leder and directed by Marcus Cole, the movie could also be more culturally sensitive toward the postwar Koreans, who come across as irredeemable villains because they scorn the mixed-race children the American fighters leave behind. The creators also err with the device they’ve used to frame their flashback-told tale, since it gives away information that some viewers might prefer not to know until the end.

But Thomas and McRaney give fine performances as macho men who nevertheless go goo-goo gaga over the little guy, and they get solid support from Keith MacKechnie as the most enthusiastic of Danny’s many uncles.

So, pull your family together in front of the TV Sunday night and root for these sailors and their baby to make it home in time for the holidays. And don’t forget to stockpile those towels.

* “A Thousand Men and a Baby” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on CBS (Channel 2). The network has rated it TV-G (suitable for all ages).