Stand By For Action

This flag-waving, anti-Japanese Hollywood film was released almost a year to the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. By this time, all of the studios were making war movies and rushing them out to a waiting nation. Many of them had cookie-cutter plots, and STAND BY FOR ACTION is no exception to that trend, although its special effects (which earned an Oscar nomination) and the stellar cast place it a cut considerably above most of its contemporary competitors. Taylor (in a role turned down by Robert Donat after his huge success in GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS) stars as a Harvard-educated snob who has his cockiness knocked out of him when he faces real war. A Naval Reservis...