{"id":6183,"date":"2021-02-17T15:32:11","date_gmt":"2021-02-17T15:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/?p=6183"},"modified":"2021-02-17T17:17:09","modified_gmt":"2021-02-17T17:17:09","slug":"john-wayne-movie-review-i-cover-the-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/john-wayne-movie-review-i-cover-the-war\/","title":{"rendered":"John Wayne Movie Review – I Cover The War!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I Cover the War! (1936)<\/strong> Universal, Dir: Arthur Lubin b\/w, 65m<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Cast:<\/strong> John Wayne, Gwen Gaze, Don Barclay, Charles Brokaw, James Bush, Pat Somerset<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI Cover the War!\u201d is a contemporary comedy stroke melodrama featuring John Wayne and Don Barclay as two intrepid newsreel men, Bob Adams and Elmer \u201cSlug\u201d Davis, working for a company based in London. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lobby<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Back from an assignment in what looks like the Spanish Civil War going by the stock footage, their boss sends them off to Samari, a place located near the border with Iraq and ruled by the Brits who are obviously still holding on to their ever-shrinking empire. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bob and Slug’s mission, which they are forced to accept or get fired, is to capture footage of the Arab leader Muffadhi, played by Charles Brokaw, a damned shifty cove of a Johnny Foreigner if ever there was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the plane to Samari Bob\u2019s pet monkey \u201cWide Angle\u201d wanders down the aisle to complain no one\u2019s brought him any peanuts yet and settles on the lap of Pamela Howard, played by Gwen Gaze. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bob and Pam are obviously enamoured with each other from the get go, Pam on her way to visit both her uncle and her fianc\u00e9. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This being set in the 1930s you\u2019re allowed to smoke on a plane, and even if you\u2019re not I wouldn\u2019t want to be the one to tell JW to stub his fag out. Would you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Bob\u2019s younger brother Don, played by James Bush, turns up in London to meet his older bro, only to be told by Harris, boss of the newsreel company, that Bob\u2019s off to Samari. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don helpfully asks on behalf of the audience how to get there and is informed via the medium of obvious exposition \u201cby plane to Damascus then over the desert by car\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The boys and Pam eventually arrive in Samari, a place teaming with Hollywood Arab\u2019s who walk the streets of the casbah to the accompaniment of typical Middle Eastern-like music looping permanently in the background. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pam is greeted by her uncle, Col. Hugh Armitage, played by Major Sam Harris who also serves as a technical adviser on the making of \u201cI Cover the War!\u201d. Also waiting to meet Pam is her fianc\u00e9, Archie, who is so obviously a dweeb, and British at that, it\u2019s a fair bet Bob is going to make a beeline for Pam quicker than you can say \u201cscram, loser\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don turns up in Samari to tell Bob he\u2019s dropped out of medical college in order to be a cameraman just like his big brudder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Despite wanting to punch Don\u2019s lights out for skipping college, which isn\u2019t surprising seeing as Bob\u2019s been paying the fees, he suggests Don sticks around just so that he can see for himself what a dead end job it is being a cameraman. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of violence, it\u2019s already about a third of the way through the film and Wayne hasn\u2019t punched anybody yet. Poor show, as the Major might have said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bob and Slug follow Archie and the Colonel out on patrol and film the aftermath of an ambush which proves that the villainous Muffadhi has managed to arm his men with machine guns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Archie then confiscates Bob\u2019s newsreel footage to ensure that information isn\u2019t revealed to the wrong people, stating \u201cit will better orf in the safe at headquarters\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Archie then goes the whole hog and takes away all of the passes from the newsreel contingency, including another camera team consisting of Graham and Parker who on the surface appear to be vying with Bob and Slug to capture the best action sequences on film. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bob \u201cburns\u201d his pass before Archie can get it, but Don can see it\u2019s not the real thing. We then discover that Graham and Parker are actually running guns for Muffadhi, but as they don\u2019t have their passes they\u2019re unable to travel anywhere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their situation is resolved when Don nicks his brothers pass for a promise of a job with the two gun running swine who he then accompanies to Muffadhi\u2019s camp, unaware that he\u2019s been given a proper job by Bob\u2019s London boss. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whilst all this is going on Bob makes a play for Archie\u2019s squeeze Pam, who responds with unabated enthusiasm, much to Archie\u2019s chagrin as he secretly catches them canoodling in the moonlight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pace starts to pick up a bit from this point with Wide Angle finding a microphone in Bob\u2019s room planted by the gun runners, Bob finally throwing a punch in the direction of his brother even before he realises Don \u201cborrowed\u201d his pass, whilst Graham and Parker\u2019s contact to Muffadhi retires them from their gun running duties by having them murdered,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bob and Slug are lured to Muffadhi\u2019s camp by the mysterious contact who then reveals that he\u2019s actually the Arab leader himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Muffadhi then announces to his \u201cguests\u201d that he\u2019s off to wipe out the British but then shows his more thoughtful side by posing for Bob and Slug like the arrant showman he so obviously is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Muffadhi leads his men into battle against Archie and the Colonel, leaving Bob and Slug to trick their guards into thinking they\u2019re helping them make a film. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They then drive off to warn the British column but both of them sustain bullet wounds which kind of slows them down a bit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In what is quite an interesting plot twist they record a message on film about Muffahdi\u2019s intentions before they pass out from their wounds just as they reach safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the film is developed and Bob\u2019s message is discovered Muffahdi and his followers are bombed into oblivion from the air, saving what is left of the British column. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All\u2019s well that ends well with Bob doing what most Americans did in the 1940s by walking away with somebody else\u2019s girlfriend, Archie doing the honourable thing and all that don\u2019t you know and giving up on a bad thing. Plus ca change, as they say in Paris France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI Cover the War!\u201d has its moments with the interplay between Bob and Slug particularly entertaining but the story is a bit over-convoluted at times. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wayne is at this point starting to show promise as a credible romantic lead which bodes well for his breakthrough film, \u201cStagecoach<\/a>\u201d a few years later. File under \u201cworth taking a look at\u201d if you\u2019ve not seen it before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe you would like to read more of John Wayne’s movies of the 1930s<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I Cover the War! (1936) Universal, Dir: Arthur Lubin b\/w, 65m Cast: John Wayne, Gwen Gaze, Don Barclay, Charles Brokaw, James Bush, Pat Somerset \u201cI Cover the War!\u201d is a contemporary comedy stroke melodrama featuring John Wayne and Don Barclay … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[307],"tags":[317],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6183"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6183"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6189,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6183\/revisions\/6189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}