Columbia Hits A Budget Beach

From The Schneer School Of Combat Comes Tarawa Beachhead (1958)

It's overlooked today how Charles H. Schneer graduated from the Sam Katzman school of ultra-cheapies for any genre that paid, his a fast hand for dealing sub-features until The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad sent Schneer-Harryhausen magic shows to the top of bills. Tarawa Beachhead was a "Morningside Production," Schneer's shingle, with release through Columbia, just as with Katzman. Sinbad himself, Kerwin Matthews, gets to play hard-bitten for adults and acquits fine. I wonder if he didn't look back and consider this the better acting opportunity, however puny Tarawa Beachhead turned out otherwise. So many actioners used combat footage from the lately won war and seldom did it match well with staged stuff. Battle Cry's hit of 1954 had put successors to task of shuttling between battlefields and love interest on leave, thus Julie Adams and Karen Sharpe as partners to Matthews and co-officer Ray Danton. War movies by the late 50's were almost as ubiquitous as westerns; every action bill seemed to feature one, the other, or both. Potential for winning boxoffice battle was determined by who wore uniforms, big stars like Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift in likes of The Young Lions, or Kerwin Matthews and Ray Danton dressed out for Tarawa Beachhead, bill placement and grosses easy enough to predict from there.