The Wackiest Ship in the Army is a 1960
comedyComedy as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse generally intended to amuse, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in Ancient Greece...
filmFilm encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects....
starring
Jack LemmonJohn Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III was an American actor. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts, Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger, The Out-of-Towners, The China Syndrome, Missing, Glengarry Glen...
and
Ricky NelsonEric Hilliard "Ricky" Nelson, later known as Rick Nelson , was an American singer, musician and actor. He placed 53 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1957 and 1973, including 19 top-ten hits...
.
Lt. Rip Crandall, an expert yachtsman in civilian life, is surprised to see that he has been assigned to command a sailing ship in wartime. The only other member of his crew who knows how to work a ship with sails is eager young Ensign Tommy Hanson who cost him a yacht-race with a mistake before the war.
The Wackiest Ship in the Army is a 1960
comedyComedy as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse generally intended to amuse, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in Ancient Greece...
filmFilm encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects....
starring
Jack LemmonJohn Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III was an American actor. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts, Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger, The Out-of-Towners, The China Syndrome, Missing, Glengarry Glen...
and
Ricky NelsonEric Hilliard "Ricky" Nelson, later known as Rick Nelson , was an American singer, musician and actor. He placed 53 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1957 and 1973, including 19 top-ten hits...
.
Plot summary
Lt. Rip Crandall, an expert yachtsman in civilian life, is surprised to see that he has been assigned to command a sailing ship in wartime. The only other member of his crew who knows how to work a ship with sails is eager young Ensign Tommy Hanson who cost him a yacht-race with a mistake before the war. Initially he tries to refuse this dubious command but Hanson and Vandewater wear down his resistance. Vandewater points out his poor fitness report means that if he doesn't take this command he'll probably never get another and Hanson will have to try to command the ship, and Hanson takes Crandell out drinking with some of the men so he'll feel guilty about abandoning them.
They barely make out it out of the harbor, sailing straight into a storm. When the Echo arrives in
Port Moresby||-||-||-||}Port Moresby , or Pot Mosbi in Tok Pisin, population 255,000 , is the capital and largest city of Papua New Guinea . The city is located on the shores of the Gulf of Papua, on the southeastern coast of the island of New Guinea.The area on which the city was founded has been inhabited by...
, Crandell is supposed to train a replacement to use the Echo to deliver a coast watcher named Patterson to a location only a shallow-
draftThe draft of a ship's hull is the vertical distance between the waterline and the bottom of the hull , with the thickness of the hull included; in the case of not being included the draft outline would be obtained...
vessel can reach. However the replacement commander strikes Crandell as stiff-necked and unqualified to handle this kind of mission and he takes the ship out under his own command to deliver Patterson.
Making the crossing in a not very convincing disguise as a "native trading vessel" they are spotted and photographed by an enemy plane, and while they are delivering their passenger a Japanese force from a passing war fleet boards the scow and captures the landing party when they return. Crandell manages to rally his men to take the ship back, but is then faced with the decision of whether to radio a warning about the fleet even though that will give away their position to guns on shore. He sends the warning, and abandons ship as the guns open fire on the Echo and destroy it. Crandell and his crew survive to be rescued and Crandell gets command of a modern destroyer for his role in helping to win the battle.
Cast
- Jack Lemmon
John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III was an American actor. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts, Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger, The Out-of-Towners, The China Syndrome, Missing, Glengarry Glen...
as Lt. Rip Crandell
- Ricky Nelson
Eric Hilliard "Ricky" Nelson, later known as Rick Nelson , was an American singer, musician and actor. He placed 53 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1957 and 1973, including 19 top-ten hits...
as Tommy J. Hanson
- John Lund
John Lund was an American film actor of Norwegian ancestry who is probably best remembered for his role in the film A Foreign Affair , directed by Billy Wilder....
as Lt. Cmdr. Wilbur F. Vandewater
- Chips Rafferty
Chips Rafferty MBE was an iconic Australian actor. His career stretched from the 1940s until his death in 1971 and during this time he made regular appearances in major Australian feature films as well as appearing in British and American productions...
as Patterson (coast watcher)
- Tom Tully
Tom Tully was an American actor.-Biography:Born in Durango, Colorado, Tully served in the United States Navy and worked as junior reporter for the Denver Post before went into acting because he felt the pay was better. Tully started out on stage before eventually acting in Hollywood films in 1944...
as Capt. McClung
- Joby Baker
Joby Baker is a Canadian born actor and painter.He was born in Montreal, Quebec. In the early 1960s he began making guest appearances in TV series such as Dr. Kildare and The Dick Van Dyke Show...
as Josh Davidson
- Warren Berlinger
Warren Berlinger is an American character actor, with both Broadway runs and over a thousand television appearances to his credit.-Personal life:...
as Radioman 2nd Class A.J. 'Sparks' Sparks
- Patricia Driscoll
For other persons named Patricia Driscoll, see Patricia Sriscoll.Patricia Driscoll is an Irish actress, who has appeared on both television and in films. She was born in Cork, Ireland....
as Maggie
TV series
The story was also used for the 1965 TV series
The Wackiest Ship in the Army (TV series)The Wackiest Ship in the Army is a American sitcom that aired twenty-nine episodes on NBC between September 19, 1965, and April 17, 1966. It is loosely based on the 1960 film starring Jack Lemmon.-Synopsis:...
.
Ship
- The USS Echo was based on the real-life USS Echo
USS Echo , an unclassified miscellaneous vessel, was the only ship of the United States Navy to be named for the nymph Echo. A sailing scow, she was used as a supply ship in the South Pacific from 1942 to 1944.- History :...
, a 40 year old schooner or scow that was transferred from the New ZealandNew Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses , and numerous smaller islands, most notably Stewart Island/Rakiura and the Chatham Islands. The indigenous Māori named New Zealand Aotearoa, commonly translated as The Land of the Long White Cloud...
government to the US Navy in 1942, and returned to the New Zealand government in 1944.