Who doesn’t love Cary Grant? Recently, TCM has been running Tony Curtis’s remembrance of Grant, which reminds me of their one film together, Operation Petticoat. Curtis and Grant worked well together, and it is a pity that they did not team up for more films. Grant starred in only five more movies after Operation Petticoat before retiring in the mid-1960s, leaving an empty place on the big screen that has never been filled. Operation Petticoat will be shown on TCM on Sunday, November 16, at 9:45 pm, and if you have never seen this service comedy, I recommend it.

CARY GRANT: A MASTER AT COMIC TIMING

Some contemporary film scholars and other culture critics dismiss the film as lightweight because they can’t seem to get beyond the surface of the plot, in which the male-dominated world of a military submarine is overrun by attractive nurses. The plot does conjure up all those stereotypes regarding traditional roles for men and women as well as the clichés of romantic comedies, so if you view the story through 21st-century eyes, it is easy to find it sexist and old-fashioned. But, to do so is to miss the fun of the dialogue and situations – and perhaps part of the film’s point about gender roles and male-female relationships.

The popular appeal of Petticoat in 1959 was probably due to factors modern audiences and reviewers can’t relate to, or don’t recognize. For example, censorship restrictions had loosened earlier in the decade, but visual and verbal references to sex and other controversial topics were still not explicit or obvious. Thus, the subtle, well-written one-liners and double entendres in Operation Petticoat are tame by today’s standards. They go unappreciated and perhaps even unnoticed by movie-goers accustomed to the crude, slam-dunk sexual humor in such hit comedies as Superbad or the American Pie series. (I hate to even mention Operation Petticoat in the same paragraph as Superbad, a poorly constructed comedy weighted down by the filmmakers’ adolescent desire to shock adults with the crude humor; it’s like putting champagne and sewer water on a table side by side.)

In 1959, reviews noticed Petticoat‘s witty script and dialogue by Stanley Shapiro and Maurice Richlin, who had penned another popular favorite, Pillow Talk. Shapiro and Richlin could ask for no better actor to deliver their lines than Cary Grant, whose ease with keen comic dialogue was as much a part of his star image as his preternaturally good looks. Audiences went to Grant’s comedies expecting to see the much admired star deftly handle clever dialogue with expert timing, and the actor disappointed no one in Petticoat. For example, in one scene, Grant, as Lt. Commander Matt Sherman, argues with his superior officer that the severely battered Sea Tiger should not be destroyed before having a chance at combat, remarking, “That’s like a beautiful woman dying an old maid…if you know what I mean by old maid!” To today’s audience, the line seems out-of-date, or inconsequential. But, in 1959, the word “virgin” was still too controversial to be commonly used in dialogue, especially for comedies. Shapiro and Richlin get the same idea across by emphasizing the phrase “old maid” through repetition. Not only is that approach funnier, but the idea that it is a waste for a beautiful woman to die a virgin is made credible because it is Cary Grant – Hollywood’s most handsome, dashing romantic lead – who says so.

TONY CURTIS AND DINA MERRILL IN CLOSE QUARTERS

The writers have a lot of fun with suggestive dialogue and double entendres, but there is an underlying meaning to all of it. Later, a scene in the engine room of the Sea Tiger finds Chief Mechanic’s Mate Sam Tostin arguing with Maj. Edna Howard because she has managed to keep the engine running by attaching an elastic girdle to its parts. In exasperation, Sam, played by Arthur O’Connell, screams, “A woman just shouldn’t mess around with a man’s machinery.” But, the girdle works, and Sam learns to accept Edna’s solution to the problem and her skills as a mechanic. The girdle attached to the engine represents a perfect blend of male and female imagery and serves as a metaphor for the way the sailors and the nurses work out their differences aboard ship. Of course Sam’s remark is a double entendre that makes the line funny, but it also reveals male anxieties about gender roles and male fears that involvement with women forces some kind of change (Grant’s character suffers from this as well; Sam is a humorous, exaggerated version of Sherman). And, the girdle’s rhythmic pulsations as it is being pulled and released by the engine has a sexual connotation. But, because the girdle/engine also represents the solution to a problem, the image suggests that Sam’s anxiety about women is unfounded; indeed women messing with a man’s machinery might actually make things better and settle some problems! Yikes. I’d better stop there.

MEN AND WOMEN: WE'RE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT, OR SHOULD BE

Blake Edwards, who later made Peter Sellers a major star with the Pink Panther series, had a talent for casting well-known stars based on the nuances of their images. Grant’s identity as a master of romantic comedy is widely known today, but during the 1950s, he was also well remembered as a submarine captain in the popular war drama Destination Tokyo. His association with comedy, plus his role in Destination Tokyo, is built into his appearance in Petticoat. Curtis, who was also associated with romantic comedy, had just appeared in Some Like It Hot, successfully seducing Marilyn Monroe by doing a killer Cary Grant imitation. These subtleties of casting would have been obvious to average movie-goers in 1959, who were familiar with both Grant and Curtis in a way lost to most of today’s audiences.

PRETTY IN PINK

I think that the third “star” in the cast is the submarine called the Sea Tiger, which has a personality all its own. In the story, the sub is painted pink while docked for repairs because the standard gray is not available. The color makes for a lot of jokes from the crews of other navy vessels, and the Sea Tiger is quite a sight as it belches billowing clouds of black smoke while chugging through the waters of the South Pacific. Despite its idiosyncrasies, the Sea Tiger never let the men down, so, by the end, when it is decommissioned and scheduled for sinking, the audience is as sad as Lts. Sherman and Holden because the sub was akin to a colorful old war buddy. The Sea Tiger was “played” by three subs – the U.S.S. Balao, the U.S.S. Archerfish, and the U.S.S. Queenfish. The Balao is most associated with Operation Petticoat because it had the honor of being painted pink for the film – perhaps a dubious distinction considering the Balao‘s history. The first of the Balao class submarines to be built, the U.S.S. Balao saw wartime action from July 1943 through August 1945. The sub completed ten war patrols and sank seven large Japanese ships, plus numerous small craft. It was recommissioned during the Korean War, when it was transited to Key West for training purposes. The sub remained in Florida for the duration of its commission. The Balao was repainted grey after the film, but pink paint was still being chipped from some surfaces as late as 1962.

THE U.S.S. ARCHERFISH AND THE U.S.S. BALEO

Ultimately, the fate of the Balao was not unlike that of the Sea Tiger in the film. Decommissioned in the summer of 1963, the Balao was sunk as a target that September, though its conning tower fairwater was preserved and put on exhibit at the Washington Navy Yard in the nation’s capital. The Balao — like the Sea Tiger in the film and even the film itself — was renowned in its day; but as time passed, its value was diminished and then lost on subsequent generations who lack the context to fully appreciate its significance.