One of Otto Preminger’s few dull films, The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, stars Gary Cooper in the title role of the General.
Cooper is miscast as the Brigadier General who was relieved of his command, reduced to Colonel, and exiled to Texas after WWI, when he tried to convince the Army and Navy of the importance of air power.
After several air disasters, he publicly charged the War and Navy departments with “incompetence and criminal negligence,” and is arrested and court martialed. Charged with being publicity seeker, he is found guilty and suspended for five years.
The script and direction make Cooper look old and unheroic, instead of a dedicated man sacrificing himself for the defense of his country.
Preminger shows no emotional affinity with the material, and the court sequences are uncharacteristically static, compared to their superlative counterparts in his 1959 masterpiece, Anatomy of Murder.
That said, the supporting cast is glorious: Charles Bickford, Ralph Bellamy, Rod Steiger, Elizabeth Montgomery, Jack Lord, Peter Graves and Darren McGavin.
When The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell was released, Mitchell’s sister Ruth, who served in WWII with Yugoslavian guerrillas and later wrote a book about her brother, toured the U.S. doing publicity for the film, which helped make it more popular at the box-office, despite mixed revews.
My Oscar Book:
Oscar Nominations:
Story and Screenplay: Milton Sperling and Emmett Lavery
Oscar Awards: None
Oscar Context:
The winners were William Ludwig and Sonya Levien for the musical biopic Interrupted Melody.
