Movies - Hail the Conquering Hero

Home > Listing Index > Movies > Hail the Conquering Hero

	Movies - Hail the Conquering Hero

Hail the Conquering Hero is a 1944 Hollywood comedy movie written and directed by Preston Sturges, starring Eddie Bracken and William Demarest. Other notable featured actors are Ella Raines, Franklin Pangborn and Raymond Walburn.

Plot outline

Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith (Bracken) is a small town boy who has been rejected from the United States Marines owing to his chronic hayfever. Rather than disappoint his mother, he pretends to be fighting overseas while secretly working in a San Francisco shipyard. After a chance encounter in a bar in which he buys a round of drinks for six Marines headed by Sgt. Heppelfinger (Demarest), the group decides to return Woodrow to his home, so as not to worry his mother. The Marines, to the chagrin of Woodrow, encourage the charade by loaning him their medals. Unfortunately, word reaches the whole town and when they step off the train, the harmless charade has escalated into town-wide deception, with the unwilling Woodrow soon enmeshed in the mayoral election.

The film can be seen as a look at both patriotism and hero workship in World War II America, and while adhering to the Hollywood wartime production code, it is retrospectively somewhat critical of the period's society's willingness to embrace heroes. In this regard it is somewhat of a companion piece to another Sturges film, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, which also featured Bracken, Demarest, and Sturges' usual cast of repertory bit players.

Award Nominations

Best Writing Original Screenplay, 1945 (nomintaion) Academy Awards

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Hail the Conquering Hero ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Hail the Conquering Hero; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay