The scenario of this film runs like a Preston Sturges comedy vehicle, but in fact the man in the director's chair is Western specialist John Ford. This is one of his rare comedies (although its war scenes are treated with some realism) and it deserves to be better known. Dan Dailey plays the man who becomes the butt of the town for not being shipped off for action after he's been the first to enlist (even the dogs attack him - a bit like Fredric March in 'Nothing Sacred') and Ford picks away gently but firmly at the small-town hypocrisy that places Dailey figuratively in the stocks. Dailey gives a much better performance here than the one that won him an Oscar nomination two years earlier in When My Baby Smiles at Me, and the hypocrisy of small-town life is persuasively drawn. Keep your eyes peeled for a brief glimpse of Vera Miles in her film debut. Dailey's character's home town, incidentally, is Punxatawney, many years later the setting for the comedy hit Groundhog Day.


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