March on, Marines (1940) User Reviews

Like a mini movie more than a short film.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 19 July 2020]

"March On, Marines" is a short film that plays less like a traditional short but more like a mini movie. And, it easily could have been stretched out a bit to make it a full-length film. But apparently, Warner Brothers was more concerned about making a short that would make the Marines look wonderful, as the US entry into WWII was only a short time away.

Two sergeants in the Marine Corps are both planning on taking the exam for the Naval Academy. They are, in pretty much all respects, the same....with the same skills, rank, and knowledge. To make things more complicated, they both are brothers AND are interested in the same girl! So what's to come of all this?

The film is well acted and very well made....with lovely Technicolor and it clearly was an important film for the studio. It also gave a chance for one of the studio's up an coming leading men, Dennis Morgan, to star as one brother. Mildly enjoyable and interesting.

Technicolor twaddle

[paulwl · 6/10 · 15 June 2006]

Dennis Morgan as a singing drill instructor? Don't buy it for a minute. "March On, Marines" is like a twelve-year-old boy's fantasy of the peacetime Marine Corps - all snappy uniforms, parades and pretty admiral's daughters. The obvious motive of this visually striking two- reeler was to paint a stirring red-white-and-blue portrait of a fighting force whose true nature as hard-ass professional killers wouldn't have been palatable to an innocent 1940 public who needed gearing up for the inevitable conflict to come.

The central story involves Morgan and his brother as two buck sergeants competing for one appointment to Annapolis, and one admiral's daughter. Morgan welcomes new recruits (every one in a soft floppy campaign hat) with a speech so fatherly and democratic it would barely cut the mustard at Scout camp, then leads them through a "sea school" that consists entirely of knot- tying. Pal-o-mine dialog and college-boy rah-rah, right down to a lusty male choir singing "Over the Sea, Let's Go, Men!" gives the impression that the U.S.M.C. is just a swell bunch of clean-living fellas who happen to be the finest-trained soldiers on earth - despite their comical WW1 tin hats and sissified elbow pads on the rifle range. Morgan's DI character never cold-cocks a recruit or even raises his voice above a necessary level. One hopes Morgan, who died in 1994, went to his heavenly reward - because legendary gunny sergeant Lou Diamond would surely have been waiting for him in hell.

I Got A Million Of Them

[boblipton · 5/10 · 18 July 2020]

Dennis Morgan and David Bruce are US Marines, brothers, and their father was a Mairne officer. They're competing for the same slot at Annapolis for OCS and the same girl.in this virtual advertising short for the Marine corps produced by Warner Brothers. As is common with these Warner Technicolor shorts, it's gorgeous bilgewater.

SInce I have to stretch this review to ten lines, let me tell you the joke about the Second US Marine. He's sworn in, marched onto the deck of a ship, where he relieves the First US Marine. After twelve hours marching up and down, the First US Marine relieves. "Tought duty!" says the Second Marine. "Hah!" says the first. "You don't know what it was like in the old Marines."

I said I had a joke. I never said it was good.

At the time that this short was released . . .

[oscaralbert · 7/10 · 21 July 2020]

. . . by the always eponymous Warner Bros., the talk of the town in Washington, DC, was all about the Fifth Columnist Pachyderm Party Quislings in the U.S. Senate's claim that they wanted to pinch a few pennies by disbanding the "outmoded" Marine Corps. Military historians credit MARCH ON, MARINES as a major factor in the successful campaign to defeat these treasonous traitors from pulling off the Axis of Evil's "inside job." Without the prophetic prognosticators working for Warner, the Flag of Victory could never have been raised over Iwo Jima!