Joe, is a 1945 American war film directed by William A. Wellman and starring Burgess Meredith and Robert Mitchum.
[3][4][5] The untested infantrymen of C Company, 18th Infantry, U.S. Army, board trucks to travel to the front for the first time.
Lt. Bill Walker allows war correspondent Ernie Pyle, himself a rookie to combat, to accompany them.
Ernie and the company part ways, but months later he seeks to find them, as he believes that they are the finest outfit in the army.
After arrangements are made for Murphy to marry his nurse fiancée, a fatigued Ernie struggles to stay awake during the ceremony.
When his men are forced to eat cold rations for Christmas dinner, Walker obtains food for them at gunpoint.
Ernie joins the company as it proceeds down the road, narrating its conclusion: "For those beneath the wooden crosses, there is nothing we can do, except perhaps to pause and murmur, 'Thanks pal, thanks.'"
"[7] Producer Lester Cowan considered James Gleason and Walter Brennan for the lead role but selected Meredith because he was lesser known.
[7] Meredith spent time with Pyle, who was recuperating in New Mexico from the emotional effects of surviving an accidental bombing by the Army Air Forces at the start of Operation Cobra in Normandy.
Nine war correspondents are listed as technical advisors in the film's credits, three of whom appear in the scene in which Pyle learns that he has won the Pulitzer Prize.
The Army agreed to Wellman's request for 150 soldiers, who were training in California for deployment to the Pacific and had all been veterans of the Italian campaign, as extras during the six weeks of filming in late 1944.
Cowan then developed a story outline based on Pyle's columns reproduced in Here is Your War, which the Army approved on November 27.
[11] Attempts to write a script that would accurately translate Pyle's style and sentiments to the screen delayed filming for a year[12] After the D-Day Invasion of Normandy, with the end of the war in sight, the script became more focused on Pyle's movements with the infantry in its final advance to victory.
[14] Cowan's first choice as director was John Huston, who had completed only two films before entering military service.
[19]Farber adds: “Wellman’s The Story of G. I. Joe is one of the only movies in years that says just about all it has to say, and drives it home with real cinematic strength.” [19] Film critic and author James Agee lauded it in 1945: "Coming as it does out of a world in which even the best work is nearly always compromised, and into a world which is generally assumed to dread honesty and courage and to despise artistic integrity, it is an act of heroism, and I cannot suggest my regard for it without using such words as veneration and love...It seems to me a tragic and eternal work of art..." [20] The Academy Film Archive preserved G.I.