Another 30's Service Hitch

Scott and Bellamy Dueling For Dee in Coast Guard (1939)

1939 may have been the greatest year for movies by some reckoning, but they sure didn't figure Coast Guard into calculations. Still, it was humble B's like this that propped stuff we now call classic, and one could surely not do without the other. CG rehashes service yarns back to Capra and Flight, Dirigible, etc., only minus bigness of these. Ralph Bellamy is Jack Holt's substitute, a credit to the uniform, but hopeless in ways of love, thus Frances Dee collapsing into arms of wolf patrolling Randolph Scott, beginning, middle, and end reliably charted from there. We're no more sophisticated at divining such formula than 30's attendance, much less so, I'd suspect, but it was easy familiarity of these that made programmers welcome on dual-bills --- after all, didn't popcorn taste always the same? Action highlights were where most effort was applied, in this case wrecks and rescues at sea utilizing model work that belied budget limitation of the rest. We're there for the "mission" and never mind who gets the girl, that being foregone conclusion to experienced moviegoers in any case. Columbia saluted each branch of US military, repeatedly through the 30's, as would all majors and what independents could afford uniforms, message implicit that we're ready for whatever comes.