the audience applauded

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Robert Walker (Marion Hargrove), Donna Reed (Carol Holiday), Robert Benchley (Holiday), Keenan Wynn (Mulvehill), Grant Mitchell (Uncle George), Ray Collins (Brody S. Griffith), Chill Wills (Sergeant Cramp), George Offerman, jr (Orrin Esty), William "Bill" Phillips (Bill Burk), Marta Linden (Mrs Holiday), Bob Crosby (Bob), Edward Fielding (General Dillon), Donald Curtis (Sergeant Heldon), Douglas Fowley (Captain R.S. Manville), Eddie Aciff (Captain Hammond), Morris Ankrum (Colonel Forbes), Louis Jean Heydt (swearing-in captain), Mantan Moreland (porter), Harry Tyler (train passenger), Connie Gilchrist (farmer's wife), Arthur Walsh (conscriptee with glasses), Ray Teal (public relations), James Warren, Dennis Moore (executive officers), Frank Faylen (military policeman at railroad terminal), Joe Devlin (garbage bin sergeant), Mary McLeod (clerk), Jack Luden (doctor), Louis Mason (farmer), Harry Strang (captain), Eddie Hall (soldier who directs Hargrove to C.O.), Steve Barclay, Ken Scott (corporals), Blake Edwards, Rod Bacon (field operators), Myron Healey, Maurice Murphy, Fred Kohler, jr (lieutenants), John Kelly (exercise sergeant), William Newell (Smith), Michael Owen (officer of the day), Mickey Rentschler (sergeant), Clarence Straight (Captain Hamilton).Director: WESLEY RUGGLES. Additional scenes directed by Tay Garnett. Screenplay: Harry Kurnitz. Based on the 1942 book by Marion Hargrove. Photography: Charles Lawton. Film editor: Frank E. Hull. Art directors: Cedric Gibbons and Stephen Goosson. Set decorators: Edwin B. Willis and Ralph S. Hurst. Music: David Snell. Song, "In My Arms" by Frank Loesser (music) and Ted Grouya (lyrics). Costumes designed under the supervision of Irene. Assistant director: Barney Glazer. Sound supervisor: Douglas Shearer. Sound recording engineer: John F. Dullam. Western Electric Sound Recording. Producer: George Haight.Copyright 14 February 1944 by Loew's Inc. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayor picture. New York opening at the Astor: 21 March 1944. 10 reels. 100 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Marion Hargrove's adventures at an army training camp (Fort Bragg) in North Carolina, NOTES: Fact or fiction? Hargrove's depiction of himself was certainly based on fact. Indeed, by the time the movie was released, he had been promoted to sergeant.COMMENT: An amusing yet realistic account of life in a boot camp, this movie was directed with a certain amount of flair by Wesley Ruggles. It's also well acted by young Robert Walker, who receives good support all the way down the line. Although her role is small (despite her second billing), Donna Reed is also most attractively presented. Chill Wills likewise makes quite an impression as the hard-bitten sergeant. The movie was extremely successful and a follow-up, "What Next Corporal Hargrove", followed in 1945.

Viewing in 2015 a topical film from 1944 is like taking a ride in a time-worn Model A Ford...fun at first but soon annoying, unless you can remember how you felt about it in 1944. For many of us belonging to that older generation, the Model A was our first cheap used car, and we loved it. The Private Hargrove movies, unlike now classic dramas and comedies of that or any other time, probably ought to be forgotten except as artifacts of ages past. Only film history students and old folks can fully understand them. The corny jokes, the earnest patriotic comments, the primer on army life, the girls of the USO...all fall nowadays into the category of trivia.Those of us who were approaching draft age at the time watched this film and other war films with genuine trepidation that we would soon be walking in a hail of bullets on a mined beachhead. A little humor took the edge off.

It's sad but true--never look back at a film you enjoyed years ago and found a fun-filled comedy about service duty. I just watched SEE HERE, PRIVATE HARGROVE and discovered that it's a dud, without a single moment of originality in its weakly plotted and rambling "comedy," a farce that was probably seen as "original" when first released.ROBERT WALKER is genial enough in a boyish kind of way, KEENAN WYNN does fine as a slick con man type, DONNA REED is as wholesome as they come in a girl next door sort of way, and DOUGLAS FOWLEY and CHILL WILLS know how to bark orders in standard service fashion. But the material is so weak, not even ROBERT BENCHLEY (as Donna's chatterbox father) can relieve the monotony. All of the situations have been done before in much wittier ways.Walker is the bumbling G.I. who has a knack for getting himself in trouble with authority figures. None of the experiences he has in the Army are worth writing a book about, and yet that's exactly what he does (and did, in real life). Hopefully, the book was a lot better than the script derived from it.After this weak service comedy, I'm sure Walker wanted roles with more depth to prove himself a capable actor. Fortunately for him, better scripts did eventually come his way.

Nobody else seems to have made any comments on this movie, probably because, although it is often referred to in print, it's not often shown on TV. And for good reason. It's based on an autobiographical novel by Marion Hargrove. It dates badly. It was probably nothing more than a light-hearted look at basic training when it was released. But the gags have been done so often, and so much better, that it no longer strikes an audience as funny. "In our battery the portions are so small that instead of hollering come and get it, they holler come and find it." That's one of the better lines. It has a good cast, all right. Not just Robert Walker at his non-neurotic best but Keenan Wynne, Chill Wills, and other familiar types. But it's simply not a very good comedy. If you want funny and basic training, even Laurel and Hardy, or even Abbot and Costello, are funnier on the subject. And if you want a reasonably good, structured comedy on the subject, go to "No Time For Sargeants." A few seconds of Andy Griffeth looking wonderingly out the barracks window and listening to Taps and saying, "Somebody brung his trumpet," packs more laughs than this entire movie.