Operation Petticoat

Overview

Rear Admiral Matt Sherman (Cary Grant) visits the submarine Sea Tiger on the morning of its decommissioning and reminisces about his time as the first commander of the boat, in 1941. Three days after Pearl Harbor, the sub is damaged during an enemy air raid in the Philippines; rather than abandoning her, Sherman and his chiefs refloat the boat. He's forced to accept the services of Lt. (jg) Nick Holden (Tony Curtis), who has no sea experience. Sherman appoints Holden -- a born conniver, deal-maker, and scrounger (his motto: "In confusion, there is profit") -- as supply officer, and through a series of burglaries and petty thefts he gets the Sea Tiger seaworthy again. Up to this point, the movie is an increasingly amusing service comedy, akin to the lighter moments of Mr. Roberts, running on Grant's wry exasperation and Curtis's cool arrogance, coupled with Arthur O'Connell's periodic sardonic yet optimistic jabs at their situation and Gavin MacLeod's fidgety nervousness. The Sea Tiger puts to sea ahead of the Japanese with a quintet of stranded army nurses aboard. The film shifts to a new level of humor as the officers and crew try to cope with living in close quarters with five attractive women in their midst. Grant gives a very witty performance as a man who is both exasperated by the situation he is in, having to adjust his masculinity to keep it from clashing with the feminine sensibilities of his guests, and also trying to control the mating urges of his men, starting with Holden, who can't stay away from Lt. Duran (Dina Merrill). Complicating matters more is Grant's awareness that the Sea Tiger is a "virgin" -- she has never engaged the enemy, but when they finally do, the accident-prone Lt. Crandall (Joan O'Brien) causes their torpedo to miss a tanker and sink a truck (probably the funniest sight gag in the movie). The boat also gets an accidental coat of pink paint when their supply of red and white runs low, and ends up carrying several Filipino families -- including two pregnant women. Since neither the Japanese nor the Americans officially has a pink submarine, the Sea Tiger ends uphunted by both sides and come under attack by an American destroyer. That's where the women's presence becomes a godsend. The movie ends 18 years later, with Holden a serious career navy man and responsible father, married to Duran, and Grant married to Crandall, who is as accident prone as ever.

Product Details

Release Date:	07/01/2014
UPC:	0887090079907
Original Release:	1959
Source:	Olive
Language:	English
Time:	2:02:00

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Cary Grant	Lt. Cmdr. Matt T. Sherman
Tony Curtis	Lt. JG Nicholas Holden
Dina Merrill	Lt. Barbara Duran
Joan O'Brien	Lt. Dolores Crandall
Arthur O'Connell	Sam Tostin
Gene Evans	Molumphrey
Dick Sargent	Stovall,Actor
Virginia Gregg	Maj. Edna Hayward
Robert F. Simon	Capt. J.B. Henderson
Robert Gist	Watson
Gavin MacLeod	Ernest Hunkle
George Dunn	Prophet
Dick Crockett	Harmon
Madlyn Rhue	Lt. Claire Reid
Marion Ross	Lt. Ruth Colfax
Clarence Lung	Ramon
Frankie Darro	Dooley
Tony Pastor Jr.	Fox
Nicky Blair	Kraus
John Morley	Williams
Robert Hoy	Reiner,Reiner
Glenn Jacobson	Control Talker
Nino Tempo	Crewman
William Bryant	Crewman
Leon Lontoc	Filipino Farmer
James Lanphier	Lt. Cmdr. Daly
Alan Dexter	Navy Chief
Preston Hanson	Lt. Col. Simpson
Hal Baylor	M.P. Sergeant
Bob Stratton	Marine Lieutenant
Vi Ingraham	Pregnant Filipino Woman
Alan Scott	Chief of Demolition Crew
Francis L. Ward	Third Class Petty Officer
William R. Callihan	Lt. Morrison
Gordon Casell	Col. Higginson
Tusi Faiivae	Witch Doctor
Robert Keys	M.P.
Dale Cummings	M.P.
Joseph Kim	Filipino
Malcolm Cassell	Sailor
Larry Gilliland	Sailor
Fred Harlfinger II	Sailor
Harry Harvey Jr.	Soldier
Haile Chase	Soldier
Howard Venezia	Soldier
Vince Deadrick	Ad Lib
William Kinney	Ad Lib
Robert C. Youmans	Lieutenant
Bert Beyers	Bowman
Tony Corrado	Fireman Lye
Bert Byers	Bowman
Dick Callinan	Lt. Morrison
Haile Chace	Soldier
Francis De Sales	Capt. Kress
Paul Frees	Un-named Colonel in Jeep on Cebu
Bob Gibson	Seaman,Seaman
Fred Harflinger II	Sailor
Stanley Shapiro	Actor
Maurice Richlin	Actor
Russell Harlan	Actor
Clifford Stine	Actor
David Rose	Actor,Composer
Joan O'Brian	Actor
Joseph Stone	Actor
Robert Simon	Capt. J. B. Henderson
Vince Deadrick Jr.	Actor
Nelson Leigh	Admiral Koenig
Henry Mancini	Composer

Technical Credits

Stanley Shapiro

Maurice Richlin

Paul King

Joseph Stone

Maurice Richling

Blake Edwards	Director
Stanley Shapiro	Screenwriter
Maurice Richlin	Screenwriter
Cary Grant	Executive Producer
Paul King	Screenwriter
Joseph Stone	Screenwriter
Ray Austin	Stunts
Leslie I. Carey	Sound Effects,Sound/Sound Designer
Vernon Kramer	Sound Effects
Robert Arthur	Producer
Maurice Richling	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

In order to properly appreciate Blake Edwards' Operation Petticoat, or understand why it has endured in popularity for more than 40 years, one must first accept that it's a much more complicated movie than it seems. For starters, though it is set in December of 1941 and January of 1942, its plot and sensibilities are really much more reflective of postwar America; and it's also two very different kinds of comedy within one movie, each overlaying the other and working in tandem during the last 70 minutes of its two-hour running time. The first half of Operation Petticoat is an amusing service comedy that builds slowly and subtly in its intensity, playing off of Cary Grant's wry persona and his character's exasperation (really a very slow burn) over the situation in which he finds himself, stuck with a damaged submarine in the middle of a war that broke out only days earlier; and the Tony Curtis character's mix of foppish ne'er-do-well and knowing conniver/scrounger. That half of the movie is something seen before, albeit not done in quite as relaxed a manner, in the comical elements of John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy's Mister Roberts (1954) and Richard Quine's Operation Mad Ball (1957). Then, in the second half of the movie, the stranded army nurses come aboard the submarine Sea Tiger, and suddenly, in the wink of an eye, Operation Petticoat switches gears as director, script, and cast all open the throttle at once -- all of its cylinders start firing, and the movie blossoms into a much more complex and daring piece of entertainment and humor, concerning the close-quarter mingling of the sexes. This being a 1959 movie, it was impossible for Russell Harlan's camera not to linger on the voluptuous physiques of Dina Merrill, Joan O'Brien et al -- audiences expected it and, indeed, the studio making the movie would have demanded it; but those shots, and the dialogue and plot developments that go with them, linger more than they leer, and come with a fairly sophisticated purpose. The whole second half of Operation Petticoat is a sly look at late 1950's concepts of male and female sexuality, reveling in them on the one hand and cheerfully satirizing them on the other. Faced with sharing very tight quarters with a group of nubile women, Grant's and Curtis's characters (and, to a lesser degree, Arthur O'Connell's engine room chief and Dick Sargent's junior officer, and the rest of the crew) must grope -- and this reviewer uses that term in the least sexual manner possible -- around the recesses of their own masculinity and its motivations, to come to terms with their new living situation. In many ways, the movie brushes up against the same material targeted by Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (also starring Curtis), with Joan O'Brien furnishing the iconic female form (and cute, if less distinctive, personality) that Marilyn Monroe provided in the Wilder movie. The movie has a good time tweaking the more frivolous sides of femininity as it was understood in 1959; it also targets several aspects of male sexuality of the period, most importantly the misogynist mentalities of older men embodied by Grant's and O'Connell's characters, and their distrust of women, as well as the "Playboy magazine"-style hedonism embodied by Curtis's character -- it even manages to work in a gentle dig at the go-getter, success-at-any-price ideas that afflicted America in the 1950's. In the end, the Sea Tiger's loopy, halting ride across the Pacific becomes a much smoother, more subtle, and enjoyable ride for the viewer, who can absorb Operation Petticoat at its most superficial, or find amusement at deeper and more serious levels.