Chayefsky's screenplay loosely was adapted from the 1959 novel of the same name by William Bradford Huie, who had been a Seabee officer during Operation Overlord.[4] Controversial for its stance during the dawn of the Vietnam War, the film has since been praised as a "vanguard anti-war film".[5] Both James Garner[6][7] and Julie Andrews have considered the film to be the favorite of their films.[7][8]
Plot
In 1944, during World War II, U.S. Navy Lt. Commander Charlie Madison is a cynical and highly efficient "dog robber" (adjutant) to Rear Admiral William Jessup in London. Charlie's job is to keep his boss supplied with everything that he might need, including luxury goods and amiable women. He falls in love with Emily Barham, a British ATS driver from the motor pool who has lost her aviator husband, and brother and father to the war. Charlie's pleasure-seeking "American" lifestyle amid wartime rationing both fascinates and disgusts Emily who does not want to be “Americanized”, but she does not want to lose another loved one to the war and finds the "practicing coward" Charlie irresistible.
Profoundly despondent since the death of his wife, Jessup obsesses over the U.S. Army and its Air Force overshadowing the Navy in the forthcoming D-Day invasion, and decides that "the first dead man on Omaha Beach must be a sailor". A combat film will document the death, and the casualty will be buried in a "Tomb of the Unknown Sailor". He orders Charlie to get the film made.
Despite his best efforts to avoid the assignment, Charlie and his now gung-ho friend, Commander "Bus" Cummings, find themselves and a makeshift two-man film crew aboard a ship with the combat engineers, who will be the first sailors ashore on D-Day. When they land, Charlie tries to retreat, but Cummings shoots him in the leg with his Colt M1911 pistol. Shortly after, a German artillery shell lands near the limping-running Charlie, making him the first American casualty on Omaha Beach. Hundreds of newspapers and magazine covers reprint a photograph of Charlie running on the beach alone, making him a war hero. Having recovered from his breakdown, Jessup is horrified by his part in Charlie's death, but plans to use his death politically in support of the Navy's upcoming appropriations while testifying before the Senate's upcoming joint military affairs committee in Washington. Emily is devastated to have lost another person she loves to the war.
Then comes unexpected news: Charlie is alive and now at the Allied 6th Relocation Center in Southampton, England. A relieved Jessup plans to show him off during his Senate testimony as the "first man on Omaha Beach", a sailor. Limping from his injury and angry about his senseless near-death, Charlie plans to act nobly by telling the world the truth about what really happened, even if it means being imprisoned for cowardice while facing the enemy. However, by recounting to him what he had said to her previously, Emily is able to persuade Charlie to choose happiness with her instead, and to keep quiet and accept his new, unwanted role as a hero.
Cast
James Garner as Lt. Cmdr. Charles "Charlie" E. Madison
According to James Garner, William Holden was meant to play the lead role of Charlie Madison, with Garner to play Bus Cummings. When Holden withdrew, Garner took the lead role, and James Coburn was brought in to play Bus.[9]Lee Marvin is mentioned as starring in the movie instead of Coburn in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's promotional film MGM Is on the Move! (1964)[10]
The Americanization of Emily is based on William Bradford Huie's 1959 novel of the same name.[13]The New York Times ran a brief news item mentioning Huie's novel prior to its publication,[14] but never reviewed it,[15] although in 1963 Paddy Chayefsky's development of the novel into a screenplay was found worthy of note.[16] A first draft of the film's screenplay was written by George Goodman, who previously had a success at MGM with The Wheeler Dealers (1963), also with James Garner as the male lead and with the same director and producer. In 1964, a Broadway musical with music written by John Barry was announced.[17] Chayefsky's adaptation, while retaining the title, characters, situation, background and many specific plot incidents, told a very different story. He said, "I found the book, which is serious in tone, essentially a funny satire, and that's how I'm treating it."[16]
The screenplay's theme of cowardice as a virtue has no parallel in the novel; in fact, the novel does not mention cowardice at all.[citation needed]
The screenplay implies, but never explicitly explains, what is meant by the term "Americanization". The novel uses "Americanized" to refer to a woman who accepts, as a normal condition of wartime, the exchange of her sexual favors for gifts of rare wartime commodities. Thus, in reply to the question "Has Pat been Americanized?", a character answers:
Thoroughly. She carries a diaphragm in her kitbag. She has seen the ceilings of half the rooms in the Dorchester [hotel]. She asks that it be after dinner: she doesn't like it on an empty stomach. She admits she's better after steak than after fish. She requires that it be in a bed, and that the bed be in Claridge's, the Savoy, or the Dorchester.[13]
This theme runs throughout the novel. Another character says "We operate just like a whorehouse...except we don't sell it for cash. We swap it for Camels [cigarettes] and nylons [stockings] and steak and eggs and lipstick...this dress...came from Saks Fifth Avenue in the diplomatic pouch." Emily asks Jimmy, "Am I behaving like a whore?" Jimmy replies, "Whoring is a peacetime activity."[13]
The screenplay uses Hershey bars to symbolize the luxuries enjoyed by Americans and their "Americanized" companions, but the novel uses strawberries.[13]
The novel briefly mentions that Mrs. Barham, Emily's mother, has been mentally affected by wartime stress, but she is not a major character. There is no mention of her self-deception or pretense that her husband and son are still alive. The film contains a long scene between Charlie and Mrs. Barham, full of eloquent antiwar rhetoric, in which Charlie breaks down Mrs. Barham's denial and reduces her to tears while insisting that he has performed an act of kindness. The novel has no parallel to this scene.
In the film, Charlie is comically unprepared to make the documentary film demanded by Admiral Jessup, and he is assisted only by bumbling drunken servicemen played by Keenan Wynn and Steve Franken. In the novel, Charlie has been a public relations professional in civilian life, takes the assignment seriously, and leads a team of competent cinematographers.
1967 Re-Release and Re-Naming
The film’s 1967 rerelease hoped to benefit from the popularity of its stars; it was billed by MGM simply as “Emily.” An Metro spokesman explained that “in no way are we trying to delude the public. We felt all along that the original title—the title of the book by William Bradford Hule—was heavy and did not relate as much to the film and to Julie Andrews, who is the film’s main attraction now, as ‘Emily’ does. We simply think that we can do more business with the new title than with the old one.”[18]
Reception
Critical reception
In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther praised Chayefsky's screenplay as including "some remarkably good writing with some slashing irreverence".[19]
The New York Daily News believed the film’s satire “denigrates the Navy to the point of making it ridiculous and venal”, that the Chayefsky dialogue was “more often a dissertation than the give and take of ordinary conversation”, and that many of the picture’s scenes were “in shockingly bad taste”. Writing for the New York Herald Tribune, Judith Crist found the film to be an “almost” movie: “it almost gets where it thinks it’s going before it changes its mind and gets nowhere….and that’s a pity, because it has a lot going for it.”[20]
The Americanization of Emily has a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 14 reviews, with an average rating of 7.39/10.[21] In Slant, Nick Schager wrote "Though a bit overstuffed with long-winded speeches, Chayefsky's scabrously funny script brims with snappy, crackling dialogue."[22] In A Journey Through American Literature, academic Kevin J. Hayes praised Chayefsky's speeches for Garner as "stirring".[23]
^ abcdHuie, William Bradford. The Americanization of Emily. E. F. Dutton & Co., Inc. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 59-5060. "'Has Pat been Americanized?' ... 'She carries a diaphragm in her kit-bag'", p. 23; Strawberries "too forbidden, too expensive", p. 31; "this dress... came from Saks Fifth Avenue in the diplomatic pouch", p. 54; "Whoring is a peacetime activity", p. 102; "how can I know whether I love you for yourself or for the strawberries?" p. 104.
^"Books—Authors", The New York Times, July 14, 1959, p. 27: "'The Americanization of Emily, William Bradford Huie's new novel, will be published Aug. 12 by Dutton.... It gives a picture of the war in London in 1944 as carried on from hotel suites with the help of good food, good liquor, expensive presents, and expensive-looking women".
^Online search of NYT archives for "huie" and "emily"
^ abWeiler, A. H. "Movie Panorama from a Local Vantage Point, The New York Times, April 7, 1963, p. X15
