In an attempt to reprise her Academy-Award nominated performance in From Here to Eternity, Deborah Kerr donned a short blonde hairdo and played a soldier's widow assigned to a tropical setting in the Pacific to help soldiers in WW2 in the film The Proud and the Profane. She's very prim and proper, just as she was before succumbing to Burt Lancaster's charms in 1953, but this time around, she goes head-to-head with a stern, mustached William Holden. Given their leading lady and similar settings, it's awfully hard not to compare the two films, and From Here to Eternity is much better. I don't really like William Holden anyway, and in this unlikable role, I found him even more difficult to endure. Thelma Ritter plays a volunteer nurse, and she's exactly the same as she is in every movie: cold, rude, argumentative, and abrasive. I tried to separate her performance from the written words of her character to see which I found objectionable, and as usual, Thelma Ritter's acting was the problem. Another actress could have put a touch of warmth and compassion in the role, and if she had, the underlying emotion would have added a wonderful layer to her character. Deborah Kerr seems to be the only one who tried to act in the film, and while she does do a good job, the story falls short of From Here to Eternity and South Pacific. If you like Deborah Kerr, or classic WW2 movies and you've already seen all the good ones, go ahead and rent The Proud and the Profane. It probably won't end up being your favorite, but not every movie you see has to be excellent, right?

There's no question about Deboarah Kerr's beauty. It has an ethereal quality, as if she weren't made of flesh at all but wisps of rose-scented smoke. Her appearance is enhanced by a certain wistful quality. Her voice has a mild but constant tentative tremor, even when she's P'd off.But Noumea and Guadalcanal in 1943 is no place for a girl like this. She's enlisted and comes to Noumea in search of someone who knew the circumstances of her husband's death, killed on Guadalcanal. He was and officer with an elite group of paratroopers in the Marines. (They're never buck privates.) Yet no one seems to remember him. And here she is, at the primitive but combat-free base on Noumea, impelled to greet the wounded debarking from a ship from Guadalcanal. She feels helpless. What can she do -- offer a stick of gum to a soldier who has just had an arm amputated? And at her first encounter with a victim of combat fatigue, she runs off and pukes.The driving force behind Kerr is Thelma Ritter as the seasoned veteran, nurse, guru, mentor, wisecracking New Yorker. Every scene she's in belongs to her.But -- cherchez l'homme. William Holden is some kind of commanding officer with the returning troops. The first shot of him, with military mustache, shows us a stern, frowning, hard charger holding a swagger stick. And we know this is one highly principled and dedicated Marine officer. We know he's tough and has little room for romance. We know, too, that there will be romance anyway because William Holden is a star and so is Deborah Kerr.It helps to know that the story is from a novel by Lucy Herndon Crockett. We can anticipate almost everything that takes place -- the growing attraction, the doubt, the open conflict of sensibilities, the tears, the resolution. Not just because Lucy Herndon Crockett is a woman novelist but because she has three names. And, after all, if the delicate Deborah Kerr could turn into a slut at the first whiff of Burt Lancaster's pheromones three years earlier in "From Here to Eternity", why not do it again? Holden strides purposefully down the gangway and Thelma Ritter stops him, asking "Colonel, is there anything more we can do for your boys." He brusquely replies, "Yes, don't call them boys and leave them alone." Then he marches away without another word.Not for long though. After the usual preliminaries, Kerr finds herself preggers and when she tells Holden, he accidentally knocks her down and the baby is lost. He's disturbed. She's almost destroyed. She won't forgive him. He humbles himself. She forgives him.Not much new here but it's enjoyable to see the stereotypes animated again: horsey, aristocratic, haughty woman; part-Indian slum kid who advances through the Marine stratosphere because of hate. Both of them too full of pride because they've been hurt, but both come together at the end as the love theme swells in the background and the image of Kerr's face, radiant with hope, fades and we see the Paramount Studios mountain.

The combined credits of William Holden and Deborah Kerr will contain the titles of the best films of the Fifties. But The Proud And Profane will never go down in the top 10 list of either of these stars.Kerr is a Red Cross volunteer sent to New Caledonia which was a major US base in the Pacific War in the Forties. She's a recent widow of a Marine Lieutenant killed at Guadalcanal. Now she's in her grief trying to make some kind of atonement. What we don't need here is women on some kind of pilgrimage as her new supervisor at the Red Cross played by Thelma Ritter points out. In fact Ritter tries many times during the film to give Kerr a reality check.Holden was her husband's brigade commander and one tougher than usually tough Marine. Apparently her husband was a sensitive sort and Holden is unlike him in just about every way. In fact Holden is brutally frank about wanting to get to know her intimately and does.After which he undergoes a complete change of heart. And it turns out he's married most unhappily to a woman back in the states. These two stars had all the chemistry of vinegar and peppermint lifesavers. Funny because very soon Kerr was to be cast with Robert Mitchum in Heaven Knows Mr. Allison where he plays a tough Marine and she a nun. Those two were wonderful on screen together. But no movie magic emanated from the silver screen with Holden and Kerr.William Redfield plays a chaplain and some of those scenes with Holden were like Spock and McCoy going back and forth. Redfield was way too self righteous in a way DeForest Kelley never was.Best in the film is Thelma Ritter who many times is just that. And Adam Williams has a small, but key role as a gravedigger and tender in the new cemetery on Guadalcanal. He's the one who finally gives Kerr the ultimate of reality checks.Definitely a film for fans of the two stars and Thelma Ritter.

The scenery looks bedraggled in this movie because so many people chew it. It's an over-the-top melodrama, with William Holden being the most ridiculous. But never mind -- it has Thelma Ritter, who can save any movie. She's the best thing in this one.