Commander Charlie Madison is a cynical and highly efficient "dog robber" (adjutant) to Rear Admiral William Jessup in London.

He falls in love with Emily Barham, a British ATS driver from the motor pool who has lost her aviator husband, and brother and father to the war.

Profoundly despondent since the death of his wife, Jessup obsesses over the U.S. Army and its Air Force overshadowing the Navy in the forthcoming D-Day invasion, and decides that "the first dead man on Omaha Beach must be a sailor".

Despite his best efforts to avoid the assignment, Charlie and his now gung-ho friend, Commander "Bus" Cummings, find themselves and a makeshift two-man film crew aboard a ship with the combat engineers, who will be the first sailors ashore on D-Day.

Limping from his injury and angry about his senseless near-death, Charlie plans to act nobly by telling the world the truth about what really happened, even if it means being imprisoned for cowardice while facing the enemy.

It was recorded by Frank Sinatra with Nelson Riddle arranging and conducting on October 3, 1964 and included on the Reprise LP Softly, as I Leave You.

[14] The New York Times ran a brief news item mentioning Huie's novel prior to its publication,[15] but never reviewed it,[16] although in 1963 Paddy Chayefsky's development of the novel into a screenplay was found worthy of note.

[17] A first draft of the film's screenplay was written by George Goodman, who previously had a success at MGM with The Wheeler Dealers (1963), also with James Garner as the male lead and with the same director and producer.

[18] Chayefsky's adaptation, while retaining the title, characters, situation, background and many specific plot incidents, told a very different story.

We swap it for Camels [cigarettes] and nylons [stockings] and steak and eggs and lipstick...this dress...came from Saks Fifth Avenue in the diplomatic pouch."

The film’s 1967 rerelease hoped to benefit from the popularity of its stars; it was billed by MGM simply as “Emily.” An Metro spokesman explained that “in no way are we trying to delude the public.

We simply think that we can do more business with the new title than with the old one.”[19] In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther praised Chayefsky's screenplay as including "some remarkably good writing with some slashing irreverence".

[20] The New York Daily News believed the film’s satire “denigrates the Navy to the point of making it ridiculous and venal”, that the Chayefsky dialogue was “more often a dissertation than the give and take of ordinary conversation”, and that many of the picture’s scenes were “in shockingly bad taste”.

[22] In Slant, Nick Schager wrote "Though a bit overstuffed with long-winded speeches, Chayefsky's scabrously funny script brims with snappy, crackling dialogue.