No Time for Sergeants

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No Time for Sergeants is a 1954 best-selling novel by Mac Hyman, which was later adapted into a popular Broadway play and 1958 motion picture, as well as a 1964 television series. The book chronicles the misadventures of a country bumpkin named Will Stockdale who is drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II and assigned to the United States Army Air Corps. Hyman was in the Army Air Forces during World War II when it was part of the US Army.

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[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

[edit] Broadway play

Ira Levin adapted Hyman's novel for a play which originally appeared as an episode on The United States Steel Hour television series in March 1955, starring Andy Griffith as Will Stockdale and Myron McCormick as his nemesis Sergeant Orville King. The play then opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre on October 20, 1955, produced by Maurice Evans and directed by Morton DaCosta. Griffith and McCormick again starred, and Don Knotts made his Broadway debut as Corporal Manual Dexterity. Scenic designer Peter Larkin won a Tony Award in 1956, and Andy Griffith was nominated for a Tony for Best Featured Actor. The play ran for a total of 796 performances, closing on September 14, 1957.

[edit] Television adaptation (1955)

A live one-hour teleplay adaptation was made is 1955 with Andy Griffith as Will Stockdale, Harry Clark as Sgt. King Harry, Robert Emhardt, Eddie Le Roy and Alexander Clark. The kinescope recording of the live broadcast is available. It was part of the The United States Steel Hour, a television anthology series.

[edit] Motion picture

See No Time for Sergeants (1958 film)

No Time for Sergeants was filmed and released as a Warner Bros. motion picture in 1958. The film was directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starred Griffith, McCormick, Knotts, and most of the original Broadway cast Warner Brothers contract stars Nick Adams joined the cast as Stockdale's fellow draftee Benjamin B. Whitledge) as did (Murray Hamilton) as Irving S. Blanchard.

[edit] Television series

No Time for Sergeants came to the small screen in the fall of 1964, starring Sammy Jackson who had one line in the film version[1]. This series, airing for only one season, was a part of the William T. Orr-produced stable of Warner Brothers Television programs on ABC. The show ran directly opposite The Andy Griffith Show, the series helmed by the original star of the earlier versions of No Time For Sergeants, and was trounced in the ratings.

No Time for Sergeants was also the inspiration for the popular CBS television series Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. (a spin-off of The Andy Griffith Show) which aired from 1964-1969.

When Jackson read that Warner Brothers was going to produce a 1964 ABC television sitcom, No Time for Sergeants, he wrote directly to Jack Warner saying that he was the best choice for the role and asked Warner to examine a certain Maverick episode as proof. Ten days later Jackson was told to come to the studio to test for the role.[2] Jackson won the role over several actors including the better known Will Hutchins, a Warner Brothers Television contract star who formerly played the sympathetic Sugarfoot and also had been in the No Time for Sergeants film.[3]

Unlike Jim Nabors' Gomer Pyle, Jackson's Stockdale was no idiot; rather he had an unlimited amount of common sense displayed in various episodes.

  • Stockdale's knowledge of farming leads him to give a better image interpretation analysis of an aerial photograph than Air Force Intelligence.
  • The Air Force attempts to demonstrate the efficiency of its survival training by pitting an Air Force survival trained group against an untrained group including Stockdale in the wilderness. Stockdale takes charge with his backwoods knowledge and gives his party a comfortable time similar to being in a resort whilst the trained group barely survives.
  • Stockdale accepts kitchen details as challenges rather than punishments and impresses the mess sergeant by how well he cleans the mess.
  • Jackson's Stockdale demonstrates another more appealing quality over Gomer Pyle when he unflinchingly takes punches to his stomach from a bully with a smile and a good natured lecture to the aggressive airman [4] until Stockdale ends his lecture by knocking the bully through a window.

The series had an unusual episode Two Aces in a Hole reflecting 1964's films of Dr Strangelove and Fail Safe displaying nuclear destruction wrought by the US Air Force combined with the black comedy hypnosis of The Manchurian Candidate. Stockdale and his friend Ben witness a stage hypnotist's show (played by Pat Collins The Hip Hypnotist[5]) from backstage and are accidentally hypnotized to respond to code words that will turn them into World War II bomber pilots or revert them to their own selves. Under the effects of hypnosis the two airmen appropriate a bomber loaded with weapons where they attempt to nuke the now-friendly Germans.

The series was produced by George Burns's production company and shown in the UK on ITV from 1965 to 1969.[6]It also preceded Burns' own Wendy and Me sitcom, with Connie Stevens, which aired on the Monday night ABC schedule.

[edit] Comics

The four comics inspired by No Time For Sergeants

There exists the Dell Four Color Issue 914 comic book version of this story illustrated by Alex Toth published in July, 1958 which follows the movie's narrative. There were three follow up issues in the 1960's that were a tie-in to the short lived TV series with Sammy Jackson. Greg Theakston's Pure Imaginationreleased The Alex Toth Reader, v2 in 2005. The art has been painstakingly reproduced from the originals by a process that has been come to be known as Theakstonization, a process by which the original comics have the color leached out, leaving only the black and white line art, which is then reproduced to appear exactly as it did at the time of original publication. One of the stories offered is the original movie adaptation.

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://tvhforum.proboards81.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=help&thread=323&page=1#1959
  2. ^ ibid
  3. ^ p.138 Lamparski, Richard Whatever Became Of -? Eight Series 1982 Crown Publishers
  4. ^ http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876197-2,00.html
  5. ^ http://www.hypnoticblaze.com/pdf/Brief_Biography_Notes_on_Bypnotist_Pat_Collins_from_Blaze.pdf
  6. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057776/

[edit] External links

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William T. Orr television shows
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