The Greatest Generation of 8-Balls

McHale's Navy didn't invent the military comedy...just the war comedy. And its roots were surprisingly dark.




McHale's Navy, "The Balloon Goes Up"
OB: Tuesday, January 14, 1964, 8:30 p.m. EST, ABC
This episode first aired the day I was born.

"Somewhere in the Pacific in 1943, the tide of war had turned," the dramatic newsreel announcer intones, backing up footage of U.S. warships. "The American forces, led by the largest navy in history, were preparing to meet the embattled enemy."

Viewers that October premiere week in 1962 might have been surprised to suddenly see a World War II documentary on ABC that night, perhaps scratching their heads over whether ABC acquired the rights to NBC's Victory at Sea and chose a weird time to air it.

"Millions of men, thousands of ships, made ready for this great offensive. And in the island of Taratupa, in the heart of the South Pacific, the men of PT Boat 73 under Lt. Commander Quinton McHale, had more than their share of hazardous missions," leads us into our first glimpse at the most famous PT boat in sitcom history. After the first 30 seconds invents the "docucomedy" and paves the way for Reno 911!, The Office and Modern Family, we then see a more dramatic scene where the crew is trying to make the boat go faster. "What do they feed this thing, malted milk?" "How's the skipper doing?" "I don't think he's going to make it."

We then get our first ever glimpse of Lt. Commander McHale (Ernest Borgnine): holding onto a water ski rope with one hand and drink in the other, and wearing a straw hat. (This was a full 17 years before we saw something like this in the more serious "Apocalypse Now.") And less then a minute into the show's first ever cold open, he wipes out and we get the show's first World War II pratfall. "You 8 ball," McHale bellows (another first--that was a catchphrase), "you ain't sober enough to row in Central Park!"

Welcome to a rare television breed: the first ever wartime comedy.

This was the night, October 11, 1962, when McHale's Navy made its debut as a regular series on ABC. The timing was a rather interesting one for warships to be parading across America's TV screens: just 11 days later, President Kennedy (himself a former PT boat commander) would be live on TV, describing real, modern day warships blockading Cuba following the discovery of Soviet missile sites. But for this night, we were being taken back to World War II in a way two other debuting series of that setting--Combat! and The Gallant Men--wouldn't do, as a comedy, with a laugh track and sight gags, including a few even before the first set of opening credits.

By the time McHale's Navy arrived, the "greatest generation" was starting to inhabit advertising and network programming suites, and they were also watching at home. The way had already been paved by the legendary Phil Silvers Show (which shared actors, writers and a producer, Edward Montagne) and a CBS navy sitcom, Hennessey, starring Jackie Cooper. The later show actually left that network the year McHale premiered. And there may have been inspiration from a Broadway musical and movie: think of McHale's Navy as "South Pacific with a lot fewer nurses and a lot fewer songs, and no color." Not to mention another 1950s World War II naval comedy, "Mister Roberts."

But those earlier TV sitcoms were peacetime comedies, something that made the gambling, con artistry and other shenanigans of the otherwise bored Sgt. Bilko and his men very understandable. This was different: McHale's wasn't just a military comedy. For the first time, jokes, pratfalls and the titters of a laugh track would all be set in a war zone, just as a real war zone was popping up on our TVs for the first time, from Southeast Asia. We had once thought that kind of thing was sacred, apparently, but not by the time the early 1960s rolled around. It still wasn't an anti-war sitcom as its spiritual descendant, M*A*S*H, would be. But it was most definitely anti-military.

I was a latecomer to this show. Based on what I could see when I watched TV or perused TV listings in other cities and other states (like, when we went on vacation in Florida or visited family or friends in Atlanta) in the 1970s, apparently it was a staple at most independent TV stations that filled their schedules with reruns and film noirs, and the occasional weird game show no one else wanted like Diamondhead.  And they showed McHale and Sgt. Bilko, of course, sometimes even back to back.


But where we lived the only "indie" we could pick up was WTCG, Channel 17 in Atlanta, which it just so happened did not carry the show. So in another one of those weird "when I was born" flukes, I got to know the crew of PT-73 in Technicolor--through two theatrical films, "McHale's Navy" and "McHale's Navy Joins the Air Force" before I ever saw their regular black and white series. I only caught the show in an occasional clip, like on ABC's 25th anniversary special in 1978, but it wasn't until WTTO, Channel 21 signed on as Birmingham's first totally independent station that I was able to point the round UHF antenna on my small black and white Sanyo in the direction where I could see complete episodes.

And that's a shame. I have a special connection with this show: after all, a new episode aired the day I was born. In fact the first movie, "McHale's Navy," came out that same birth year.

What I found was a show whose jokes and gags were like shells in an actual naval engagement: they could leave a mark when they hit, but they were plenty of misses as well. I found myself chuckling about two thirds of the time, with the other third maybe rolling my eyes a bit, like when McHale says "The cat's out of the bag now," and Parker says "Oh I'm sure it's around here somewhere. Here, kitty kitty kitty!" (Parker's hyper-literalism was a running joke.) But I still smiled even at those. The idea of jokes in a war setting may have seemed outrageous and disrespectful at one time, but by the early 1960s the Pentagon made for a surprisingly good straight man. Plus the show had a stellar, committed cast that made even the most groan-worthy lines sing. In fact, the show seemed to be a tribute to character actors as much as it was to the sailors of World War II.

In the title role, in fact, is one of the most beloved character actors of all time. Ernest Borgnine started out as a boxer but it was his own mother who told him he had enough presence to make it as an actor. Borgnine's breakout role was Sgt. "Fatso" Judson in 1953's "From Here to Eternity," establishing him as a go-to guy as heavies either in military movies or westerns. While filming one such movie, "Bad Day at Black Rock," in 1955, he tried out for, and got, a far more unlikely part, that of Marty Piletti in the movie "Marty." It was a big-budget movie that today, more likely, would have been an independent film, about a shy, humble butcher who lives with his mother but is ready to cut the apron strings and discover love. (And it was totally ripped off for its love story by, of all movies, the first Rocky.) Borgnine's sweet, down to earth and against-type performance made him that year's unlikely Oscar winner for Best Actor...beating out James Dean, James Cagney, Spencer Tracy and Frank Sinatra. He later appeared in a number of classics, like "The Dirty Dozen" (and its sequels) and "Ice Station Zebra," as well as the later TV series Airwolf, The Single Guy, and the one work my children will always know: Spongebob Squarepants. Among his many guest appearances: he helped usher in The Hollywood Squares as its first-ever center square in 1966; decades later he helped usher out ER by guest-starring in the series' last two episodes in 2009. Borgnine was still working, in fact, when he died in 2012 at age 95.

In the first episode we see what looks at the outset to be an unholy match: an unmilitary crew that chews up and spits out naive, dedicated ensigns, and a new ensign who was such a screw up he once ran a destroyer into the docks at San Diego while it was still tied up. When Ensign Charles Parker first arrives, he falls off his boat, prompting laughs and jibes ("Tinker" Bell: If you keep throwing ensigns in the water they'll clog my intake valve again!). When Parker tries to get them up at reveille, they open fire with live ammunition, something McHale apparently condones. ("As long as my men do their job on missions, what they do in their spare time is their business, and that includes shooting ensigns!") A looming inspection helps them come to see this particular ensign has some integrity however, so chose to help him along by passing Captain Binghamton's inspection. Binghamton tells him at the end he's assigned to McHale's crew, and (in a perfect read of the line from the hilarious Joe Flynn), "That may not be a reward."

Parker was apparently this show's version of Barney Fife, and he's played by the perfect man for the part, Tim Conway (who years later would actually make a few movies with Fife himself, Don Knotts). After actually serving in Korea, Conway worked in radio, then became a regular on The Steve Allen Plymouth Show. Of course you very likely know Tim Conway because of The Carol Burnett Show. He was such a frequent guest on her show, and worked so well especially with Harvey Korman (and cracked up Korman almost constantly in fact), that he eventually became a full time regular in 1975. His solo series almost never did so well, however; the post-McHale western spoof, Rango, and two different variety shows called The Tim Conway Show that aired ten years apart, came and went. But McHale put him on the map, Borgnine became his mentor, and the two of them became lifelong friends. And between Knotts, Borgnine and Korman, Conway became one of the most beloved second bananas in Hollywood.


The foil for the two of them, and the rest of McHale's men, was the nasally Captain Wallace Binghamton, a base commander who didn't bark orders as much as he honked them like a goose or an old car. You got the feeling he got where he was not because of any exemplary leadership or heroism, but because he nagged and annoyed a lot of people along their way and they all wanted him off their backs.  "Cut that out!" and "Why me? Why always me?" were among his catchphrases, and Parker was always splashing or spilling something on his uniform by accident. In the first episode we find out his pre-war naval experience consisted of running a yacht club, explaining his rather snooty attitude and a complete inability to suffer fools.

Binghamton was well-played by a character actor in the role of his lifetime, Joe Flynn. Himself an army veteran from World War II, Flynn had already been a regular on two other shows, The George Gobel Show and The Joey Bishop Show. He supposedly was fired from the latter for stealing too many scenes from the show's star, but that freed him up to get cast in McHale's Navy. I first got to know Flynn in a string of Disney movies in the late 1960s and early 1970s ("The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes," "The Strongest Man in the World" and others), and he had just finished voice work on "The Rescuers" when he died of a heart attack in his pool in 1974, at the surprisingly still young age of 49. (Most of the McHale cast actually lived a long time, in fact, and for years, could've held a reunion movie if they wanted, perhaps a "one last mission" thing spoofing Borgnine's "Dirty Dozen" films. I suspect one reason they never did is because no one could possibly replace Joe Flynn.)

The rest of McHale's men included Quartermaster George "Christy" Christopher (Gary Vinson), radioman (and the guy who ran the still) Willy Moss (John Wright), torpedoman's mate and company wheeler and dealer Leslie Gruber (Carl Ballantine, who I first saw in the 1970s doing magic tricks in a Rice Krispies commercial), motor machinist "Tinker" Bell (Billy Sands, a Bilko veteran), gunner's mate (and the company's handsomest member and biggest Romeo) Virgil Edwards (Edson Stroll), and Seaman "Happy" Haines, giving some early nautical experience to actor Gavin MacLeod before he's promoted to captain 15 years later on another ABC series, The Love Boat.

Binghamton had his own ensign, the eternally brown-nosing Lt. Elroy Carpenter, who, to emphasize that point apparently, was always literally bumping into Binghamton and denying his captain any personal space. He was played by Bob Hastings, also remembered as a bartender from All in the Family and for years, the Port Charles police chief on General Hospital.

As the first few episodes spooled through the film chain at ABC central control, we would see what becomes the show's formula: the men of PT 73 may look like they're bored, goofing off or having an eternal party most of the time, but when an actual mission comes up they take everything seriously and are top-notch at what they do. (This is one of a number of tropes borrowed later by M*A*S*H.) The lone exception to all of this is Binghamton himself, however, who's apparently more obsessed with shoeshines and buttons (and McHale's men not completely wrecking the navy and single-handedly losing the war, to be fair) than he is actually fighting the Japanese. One of the few occasions he leads his men into battle, his "victory" consists of misfiring a torpedo...which then hits land and destroys an enemy supply truck.

How good was the writing on the show? Well, let me put it this way: when I was in college I had to read a book for an American literature class, and its author wrote episode #4, "PT 73, Where are You?" That writer is listed as Joe Heller, but we knew him as Joseph Heller, author of "Catch-22" which is also about World War II. Some of the characters and tropes in that book wouldn't be out of place on the show...or in that particular episode, in which lover-boy Virgil has a serious bit of bad news to break to the lieutenant commander: "I lost the boat!" (One of my favorite lines of the entire series.)

After seeing a few episodes, a formula starts to jump out that seems rather shocking for those still-simple, TV-couples-in-separate-beds days: the men often get involved in some major screw-up--I mean major, as in losing boats and (as we'll see) more, and even accidentally aiding the enemy. Usually either a spontaneous plan by McHale or some dumb luck bails them out, often even convincing Binghamton's commanders McHale is some kind of military genius who planned it that way all along. (Example: a fake PT boat designed as a decoy so the men could occasionally leave their post and help out residents of a nearby island with supplies; just as the admiral shows up and catches everyone, the fake boat draws fire from a Japanese zero which then gets shot down by the real PT 73.)  This trope would often turn up on almost all later military comedies, most notably on Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.

Before I get into the one that aired the night I was born, a word about episode guides: for McHale's Navy, they're all over the place. The one on IMdB at least gets the weeks right but the days wrong, having it come on the wrong night of the week that year. I actually had to check against the TV Guide listings from the day I was born, and double check the month's other episodes from the other weeks' listings, before I could conclude this episode actually did air as scheduled on the correct night. It's the 18th episode of the second season, "The Balloon Goes Up."
It is written by Barry Blitzer and Ray Bender and directed by the show's house director, Sidney Lanfield.

The "cold open" (many ABC shows premiering in that era had those) shows McHale in his office, playing a lonely game of Solitaire and being (once again) annoyed by Lt. Carpenter. But Carpenter has a surprise: a wire from headquarters that says Binghamton's being transferred to Admiral Rogers' staff, away from Taratupa and McHale. To say he's happy is to say the least.

Carpenter: I've never worked for a more courageous, more inspiring...oh, take me with you, sir! Please!
Binghamtom: Oh, get out of here!

There's a quick celebration with McHale and Parker, with a toast that ends with Parker, naturally, spilling champagne on the captain. (Parker: Not everybody can hold their liquor, sir!)


After the open, we see Gruber, the wheeler and dealer of the unit, at work. (This type of character would be Milo Minderbender in the book and movie "Catch-22," and Radar and Klinger on M*A*S*H.) He's negotiating with a beloved character, a Polynesian native named Urula, himself a businessman who seems to love money and unfettered capitalism.

Urula, played by Jacques Aubuchon, is a rather interesting character, a white South Seas native with broken, Tarzan-style English. Perhaps he's from the same tribe as the old white man natives who would pop up a short time later on Gilligan's Island, or a spiritual cousin to the frontier, free-market-loving Indians on F Troop. He hilariously buys from and sells to anyone with a buck or a yen, and it's not unusual for him to turn his signs at "Urula's Discount Hut" around to show Japanese or English or the two countries' flags. I can't really decide if his portrayal of a native is politically incorrect...or one of television's earliest examples of political correctness itself.

 In their latest deal, Urulu is driving a hard bargain. ("Me no deal with cheapskates, we have Marines!") Gruber is trying to unload a barrage balloon he's been offering Urulu for weeks. Urulu finally makes a deal provided they throw in some C-rations. When McHale and Parker arrive with the news about Binghamton, Urulu claps his hands and says "Union!" and his fellow natives get out their instruments and start playing. Urulu is just as happy to see Binghamton gone as everyone else, even calling him "Ol' Leadbottom" (after Binghamton's rather unfortunate earlier battle wound) like everyone else does.

Only there's one hitch: there has to be a base inventory before Binghamton can relinquish command. But everything can't be accounted for. In fact, there's $157,000.94 of stuff missing, and Binghamton is on the hook for all of it. And they have to find it quickly because Admiral Rogers wants him there immediately. (Admiral Rogers, by the way, is played by Roy Roberts; classic TV fans remember him for this role and that of Samantha's father on Bewitched.)

Carpenter: What could've happened to it, sir?
Binghamton: I'll tell you what happened, I'll tell you in one awful, sickening, horrible word what happened. (looking into the camera) McHale!

The way Joe Flynn could shout McHale's name with such disgust was a brilliant piece of comic timing. Decades later, the 'bots would frequently imitate it on Mystery Science Theater 3000. And it was a natural place for a commercial break.

Binghamton huddles with McHale to try to account for all the missing stuff.

McHale: Maybe you mislaid it?
Binghamton: Mislaid a bulldozer? Where would I put a thing like that, the filing cabinet?
Parker: The filing cabinet sir?
Binghamton: Yes, the thing over there--oh, the filing cabinet is gone too!

But it's clearly in the interest of McHale and his men to help Binghamton's mission to keep failing upward.

Binghamton: For once we're on the same side, I want out and you boys want me out!

McHale and his men ("You pirates!") discuss getting back all the stuff that's been traded away or squirreled away strategically and they understand the seriousness of the situation. But they're reluctant, since going back on deals would put them out of business.


Parker: We could be court martialed, shot! They could even write our mothers!

...or even more seriously, blowing their chance to get rid of Binghamton.

We see Urulu negotiating with a Japanese officer, played by Mako--a utility actor who often popped up in different roles on this show, just as he often did later on M*A*S*H.  "Backscratchers! Always backscratchers!" Urulu tells him. "We want swords!" He actually talks him into taking the white elephant, the "secret weapon" barrage balloon.

After the mandatory sign flippage--even flipping over a record on a turntable, from traditional Japanese music to American military music (playing both sides is apparently such a cottage industry it even has its own syndicate of in-store music)--Urulu welcomes the PT 73 crew, who now need all of their stuff back.

Urula: No no no , I not give, I rent it back, say five dollars a day plus breakage insurance? Take it or leave it.

McHale tells Parker to hand him the five bucks (another running joke, it's always Parker who has to shell out).

Then in the next scene, they're collecting all the stuff they managed to lose, including a machine gun, a bulldozer tire, an airplane turret cover, a bathtub (and stopper), even an entire plane towed by a jeep. And there's an anchor.

"Tinker" Bell: Oh incidentally skipper, you better alert headquarters, one of our destroyers is drifting out to sea.

Then Fuji, their houseboy, walks up in trunks and a snorkeling mask, dragging up a torpedo.

A word about Fuji: played by Yoshio Yoda, Fuji was a Japanese soldier who was captured, but the men were concerned he would be turned over to the Japanese, then executed or put in a prison camp, so they kept him as their PW. They allowed him to live on base and work as their houseboy while hiding him from Binghamton (who actually does discover him in a season two episode, prompting some quick thinking from McHale). Fuji is a character who represents how far Asian Americans, and the Japanese in particular, have come in pop culture. While still somewhat racist by today's standards, Fuji is sympathetic but rather smart, and the men's relationship with him is something that couldn't possibly have happened in a movie or radio show actually made during the war. Even in the 1960s, the "greatest generation" of advertising executives were less than thrilled about working with the men they were taught were a ruthless enemy, how coming to America as representatives of companies like Panasonic and Toyota to do business. The fact that we see him humanized and portrayed sympathetically showed how far we had come up to that point; the fact that he was their "houseboy" (and, unrelated to Fuji, all the times Tim Conway would pretend to have a Japanese accent to fool Captain Binghamton over the radio) showed how far we still had to go.

Binghamton is pleased to see the parade of items being brought back--even an entire plane, being towed by a jeep--but one important item is still missing: the barrage balloon. Worse yet, the admiral calls back and reports it's been sighted over an island captured by the Japanese. McHale barely talks himself and Parker out of an arrest with a promise to recover the balloon. After vowing to withstand all torture to give up his Japanese customers, Urulu quickly rolls over for ten bucks.


So Urulu, McHale and his men all head to the Japanese base...where they find the barrage balloon floating, and for sale. It turns out the Japanese have their own trading post open for business. (I love how commerce is portrayed as such a universal language here, and it's not in a way that's flattering to free-market economics.)  Sure enough, the Japanese give up the balloon...for a watch Parker's mother gave him. "See you January white sale," Urulu says to the Japanese officer as he leaves.

Carpenter and Binghamton are happily watching as PT 73 arrives towing the balloon. But as Parker unties it, it ends up taking him out to see, resulting in McHale and his men having to shoot it down (costing Binghamton a $4,000 balloon), and Parker landing in a tree.

Binghamton: Look at it! Ruined! Shattered! Full of holes!
Parker: No sir, captain, I'm fine! Not a scratch! Good as new!

The epilogue shows the men in their sailor uniforms showing off how they patched up the balloon overnight, as Binghamton gets ready to leave. But Carpenter gets a quick message to him: Admiral Rogers has cancelled the transfer due to all of Binghamton's delays. A frustrated Binghamton gets his foot tangled in a balloon rope and himself starts drifting out to sea...this time upside down. He begs McHale to shoot, so McHale says, "All right boys! Target practice!"

I'm struck by how packed with dialogue this show can be. I don't know if the writers came up with every word or (as I suspect with Flynn and Conway) there's some ad-libbing involved. I did notice that while Flynn and Conway get most of the pratfalls, Flynn seems to have the edge on the sight gags, and Conway is often called upon for funny voices. In several episodes he impersonates Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, and at least once even impersonates FDR's dog.

As I've mentioned, the show would later lend a lot of its ideas to M*A*S*H (did I also mention the still?), and the two had something else in common as well: darker source material. M*A*S*H was based on a novel and book that wasn't as anti-war as it was anti-doctor but McHale's Navy had even more bizarre origins. It began life as a 1961 episode of Alcoa Presents hosted by Fred Astaire...as a straight war drama.

In fact, in this version (which I haven't seen but I'm relying on great descriptions on Wikipedia and at TV Party) it's actually very serious. Sure, the irreverence is still there--the men go pearl diving, sell moonshine to the natives and instead of Fuji, even have tropical island women waiting on them hand and foot. But there's a deeper, darker reason for it this time. On McHale's Navy it was simply boredom between missions, but in "Seven Against the Sea" there had actually been a devastating attack by the Japanese on the island and McHale had lost most of his men. The survivors, McHale included, were acting out of grief and trauma, and simply in self-preservation status as they waited to be rescued. Eventually McHale reconciles with his sense of duty as he hears of another coming Japanese attack.

It's not known for sure why in the world ABC changed the show into a slapstick comedy between the airing of "Seven Against the Sea" and the actual series premiere. Perhaps it's because they wanted to try something different, having already slotted Combat! and The Gallant Men as straight dramas. But what it did do was pave the way for that rarest of sitcom tropes, the war comedy. There were so few of them--M*A*S*H, Hogan's Heroes, and at least two short-lived disasters--the 1970s CBS sitcom Roll Out (actually a pretty good idea for a show...about an all-black unit during World War II) and poorly done 1980 NBC entry, Six O'Clock Follies, about a team of newsmen broadcasting to service people in Vietnam over Armed Forces Television.

Perhaps a polarized, war-weary nation isn't in the mood for any war comedies right now, or any anti-war comedies for that matter. And how soon is "too soon" for a comedy set against the War on Terror? We've already had one drama set in Iraq, Over There. Maybe we're not ready for those either?

McHale's Navy made light of World War II even if it only meant to make light of the military. And after eleven years of seeing the Korean War portrayed on M*A*S*H and even longer watching Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan play out, it's the kind of thing that would be harder to watch now. We can still enjoy the reruns and DVDs and streamed episodes, and appreciate that it was filmed in another time (with good writers and masters of comedy and character acting). But as far as new episodes and new series go, McHale's Navy and its ilk is something we'll likely never see set sail for another mission, ever again. 

Availability: Shout! Factory has released the entire series on DVD, and episodes are on Hulu and Youtube (Hulu obviously has the most consistently good video though). It's also in reruns on Antenna TV.
Next time on this channel: the Goodson-Todman panel shows.

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