Educational short about the status of battle tanks and tank training in the U.S. Army in pre-War 1941, featuring a comical Army trainee from the Bronx.
| Tagline | |
| Release Date: | Oct 04, 1941 |
| Genres: | Comedy, War |
| Production Company: | Warner Bros. Pictures |
| Production Countries: | United States of America |
| Casts: | George Tobias, Richard Travis, Gig Young, Frank Wilcox, Knox Manning, Byron Barr |
| Status: | Released |
| Budget: | $0 |
| Revenue: | 0 |
George Tobias is quite amusing here as the New York taxi driver "Malowski" who heeds President Roosevelt's stirring call to arms in 1941 and - much to the disbelief of his gal - joins up. He decides to drive his cab all the way to Fort Knox in Kentucky where he enlists and is trained on the rudiments of learning how to drive a tank. I'm not sure this is really about tanks at all, it's more of an educational training film that extols the virtues of the US Army, it's training and equipment - all with a view to tugging at some patriotic heart-strings and increasing recruitment. Some of the commentary is just a little on the over-zealous side and I'm not sure anyone would describe the military infrastructure as a "democracy" - regardless of your caste or creed! Tobias and his yellow "Betsy" try to inject a little humour and humanity into this quite brutal tree-bashing film before a rather rousing denouement that only needed a poster from Lord Kitchener. These films all had their purpose and the war may have turned out quite differently had they not achieved their goals - but the almost fervent tones of narrator Knox Manning did grate after a while. PS: Didn't Benjamin Franklin take an awful long time to write his name?!
