Hopefully, when people went to see "Ten Gentlemen from West Point" they weren't expecting a history lesson, as the plot is, for the most part, fiction...and rather silly fiction. According to this film, the US Congress was not particularly excited about starting the military school at West Point, New York and the film shows that the school's commandant, Major Carter (Laird Cregar) does his best to make the cadets hate the school and want to go back home. So, for much of the film, he has the cadets treated poorly though, unexpectedly, the men somehow prove themselves.
The problem with this movie isn't just that it's poor history but the dialog and music are, well, pretty dumb. Again and again and again, you hear strains of "Yankee Doodle"...and the band at West Point only seems to play this tune! I can only assume no other songs were written at the time! And, the dialog and characters just seem a bit cartoony and unreal. Overall, a rather silly film and by the end I still had no idea WHAT Maureen O'Hara was doing in the middle of all this. Easy to skip and just plain silly.
By the way, towards the end you see natives from the Indiana/Ohio area all hanging out in tipis. This was NOT how they lived and such dwellings were used much further west by nations like the Sioux.
The problem with this movie isn't just that it's poor history but the dialog and music are, well, pretty dumb. Again and again and again, you hear strains of "Yankee Doodle"...and the band at West Point only seems to play this tune! I can only assume no other songs were written at the time! And, the dialog and characters just seem a bit cartoony and unreal. Overall, a rather silly film and by the end I still had no idea WHAT Maureen O'Hara was doing in the middle of all this. Easy to skip and just plain silly.
By the way, towards the end you see natives from the Indiana/Ohio area all hanging out in tipis. This was NOT how they lived and such dwellings were used much further west by nations like the Sioux.