Eager to enlist the Marines

HOLLYWOOD has always been fascinated with the Armed Services. In fact, the very first movie to win a best picture Oscar was the 1927 World War I epic, “Wings.”

Though the Army, Navy and Air Force have been well represented on the big screen, they have been outranked by the Marine Corps. Over the decades Marine movies have run the gamut from the “Halls of Montezuma,” “To the Shores of Tripoli” with “A Few Good Men” thrown in for good measure.

The latest cinematic recruit is “Jarhead,” which opens Friday. Directed by Oscar-winner Sam Mendes (“American Beauty”) and based on the 2003 bestselling book about former Marine Anthony Swofford, the antiwar, comedy-drama chronicles his surreal exploits in the Corps from his training days to his Desert Shield experiences in Saudi Arabia and to fighting the Iraqis in Kuwait in 1991.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Swofford, a third-generation Marine, and Jamie Foxx is his tough-as-nails leader, Sgt. Siek.

So why has Hollywood produced such an inordinate amount of films dealing with the Marines, the smallest branch of the service?

“When I was growing up there was always this kind of special aura that surrounded the Marine Corps,” says Rick Jewell, film professor at the USC School of Cinema & Television. “The Marines were the elite branch of the service. There was this notion that the Marine Corps were the group you called on first when you had a major military problem. This is stretching it a bit, but it was almost like the Marine Corps was the cult of the military. You wanted to be part of this because it made you into something special -- the best that America had to offer.”

And it was that special aura that captured Hollywood’s attention.

Starting with the silent era, two of the most popular films were Marine Corps dramas, “What Price Glory” and “Tell It to the Marines,” both produced in 1926.

Based on Maxwell Anderson’s hit play, “What Price Glory” focused on the two-fisted Marine sergeants Quirt (Edmund Lowe) and Flagg (Victor McLaglen) who brawl and womanize their way through France. “Glory” was remade in 1952 with James Cagney and Dan Dailey.

The “Man of a Thousand Faces,” Lon Chaney, didn’t use any makeup to play Sgt. O’Hara in “Tell It to the Marines,” the tough commander with a heart who whips a group of raw recruits into fighting shape.

William Haines plays troublemaker “Skeet” Burns, whom O’Hara vows to transform into a Marine. And of course, he does.

There was a steady stream of films dealing with the brave exploits of the Marines produced during and after World War II, including 1942’s “To the Shores of Tripoli,” 1943’s “Salute to the Marines,” 1945’s “Pride of the Marines” and 1949’s “Sands of Iwo Jima.”

“Lots of different people embodied that persona [of the ideal Marine],” Jewell says, “but perhaps nobody better than [John] Wayne in ‘Iwo Jima.’ ”

Wayne received his first best actor Oscar nomination as Sgt. John M. Stryker in the historical action-adventure directed by Allan Dwan.

“Not only was he just tough as nails and willing to sacrifice himself for the good of the unit, the grand design of the war and of America itself, he also had a sensitive side,” Jewell says. “The John Agar character in the film changes his attitude completely [because of Wayne]. He hates his father. He hates Wayne, but by the end of the film he has become the next generation of the Marine Corps spirit.”

STRYKER, though, is a far cry from the Marine madmen played by Robert Duvall in 1980’s “The Great Santini,” R. Lee Ermey in Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 “Full Metal Jacket” or Jack Nicholson in 1992’s “A Few Good Men.”

In fact, the change in Hollywood’s attitude toward the Marines parallels the rise of the antiwar movement that began during the Vietnam conflict.

Jewell cites “Great Santini,” for which Duvall was Oscar-nominated as a martinet career soldier, as the turning point in Marine movies.

“That’s when, instead of that kind of idealized vision of the Marine, you get the other side,” Jewell says. “You begin to feel these characters as not so admirable, as embodying not the best of America, but maybe the worst of America. They lose completely their humanity and become just monsters.”

But perhaps none so monstrous as Ermey’s Gunnery Sgt. Hartman, a foul-mouthed maniac who drives one of his recruits to suicide in “Full Metal Jacket.”

“If you ladies leave my island, if you survive recruit training, you will be a weapon,” Hartman tells his men. “But until that day ... you are the lowest form of life on Earth.”

Adds Jewell: “It is the liberal or pacifist vision of the Marine as a killing machine. In these later films the [Marine] spirit is more about madness. This kind of stuff has been taken to such an extreme so people like Nicholson or Ermey are frightening characters.”