Robert J. Maxwell William Manchester was an award winning novelist, reporter, historian, biographer, and friend of John F. Kennedy. His account of his experiences in combat on Okinawa are among the most vivid ever published. And this is the movie that prompted him to enlist in the Marine Corps during World War II.Manchester was impressed, he says, by the same elements of the movie that I say will impress the ordinary viewer of today. Marine Corps boot camp is a lot of fun with plenty of jocular fellows to play grabass with. Your Drill Instructor looks like Randolph Scott. He's stern and crusty on the outside, but underneath that he's a concerned and devoted friend. (Underneath THAT he's a real mean son of a gun.) You get to wear snappy uniforms and after boot camp, why it's nothing but dress blues. Your training takes place in the impeccably kempt Camp Pendleton under the blazing blue skies of San Diego. Once you finish boot camp you go to Sea School and get to take a sea-going vacation aboard a battleship. Oh, there's always Randolph Scott around to say things like, "Step to it, men," but the tone is always avuncular.On top of that, you -- a mere enlisted man -- get to make out with the stunning Maureen O'Hara, who was about twenty years old at the time. She's a lieutenant and you're supposed to do no more than salute her but nobody pays attention to these silly rules. It's all photographed in gorgeous Technicolor and you know what? Maureen O'Hara is a drop-dead hottie even without flaming red hair.Man, is John Payne lucky. Well, maybe not THAT lucky. He was supposed to wind up happily married to O'Hara, both devoted to a peaceful military routine, but half-way through the shoot, the plot was interrupted by some uncommonly rude Japanese who attacked us at Pearl Harbor. Poor Zanuck, the producer, had to stick on a brief prologue about "the current conflict" and change the ending so that Payne, Scott, O'Hara, and all the boys climb aboard a troop transport for the Pacific, enthusiastically singing the Marine Corps hymn accompanied by a marching band. What a fantasy.Want to see what happened to William Manchester? Read his awesome memoir: "Good-bye, Darkness."

bensonmum2 To the Shores of Tripoli is the kind of movie that I generally don't care for. The title may conjure images of Marines fighting and dying on some foreign shore, but you won't find that here. Instead you'll find a flag-waving recruitment film that makes Marine basic training look like a trip to summer camp. The movie makes it seem that the entire eight week training is made up of little more than marching and doing drills in a parking lot. And when these guys aren't in the parking lot, they're pulling pranks and wooing nurses they've been told to leave alone. Abbott and Costello's Buck Privates has more in the way of military realism than To the Shores of Tripoli.Yet despite all its shortcomings, forced patriotism, and light as air plot, I enjoyed To the Shores of Tripoli. I was somehow able to put my brain on hold and go along for the ride. It's harmless, good-natured fun. Most of my enjoyment probably comes from the three main leads. John Payne, Maureen O'Hara, and Randolph Scott do a solid job with what they're given to work with. Much of the comedy works, particularly the hospital scene where Payne fakes an injury to be near O'Hara. And, To the Shores of Tripoli has an innocence to it that you don't find in movies anymore that I find appealing.

PWNYCNY After watching this movie, I now know where the "Officer and a Gentleman" screen writers probably got their idea for the character Sgt. Foley. Randolph Scott was the Sgt. Foley of the 1940s. This movie was made during World War Two, but it spares us the jingoistic propaganda associated with most war movies of that era and offers interesting and likable characters, especially Maureen O'Hara as a Navy nurse and John Payne as the recruit. While watching this movie I thought of Richard Gere and how he would have fit in well in this movie. The similarities between this movie and "Officer" must be more than just coincidental. "Officer" was more intense but this movie did not need to rely on such theatrics to maintain audience interest because the star of this movie was the USMC itself.

bsmith5552 I just saw "To the Shores of Tripoli" recently and was very disappointed. I expected a blood and guts war movie, but what I got was essentially a U.S. Marine recruitment film. Set just prior to the U.S. entry into WWII, it tells the story of womanizing playboy Chris Waters (John Payne) who is sent by his father to enlist in the marines. He reports to his father's old sergeant Dixie Walker (Randolph Scott) with instructions "to make him into a man". The wise old sergeant see some potential in his charge but the two clash repeatedly. Into the mix comes Nurse Mary Carter (Maureen O'Hara) whom Carter tries to woo. That's it. 20th Century Fox under Producer Darryl F. Zanuck seems to have lavished a large budget complete with technicolor on this picture. Color films of the time were rare and were usually reserved for big budget musicals. The so-called marine training we see is restricted to close order drills with little action to boot. There's a brief fight between Payne and Scott and a sequence involving navy target shooting. The rest of it concentrates on the interplay between the three stars and little else. The best thing about this movie is a chance to catch the timeless beauty of Maureen O'Hara. Yet to acquire her trademark flaming red hair, she is nonetheless breathtaking in glorious technicolor. Payne and Scott are totally miscast. Payne is not very convincing as a rich kid playboy and Scott, who was more at home in the saddle, simply is not my vision of a sadistic drill sergeant. He did do better though, in 1943's "Gung Ho". There are some other recognizable faces in the cast. Elena Verdugo has a nice bit as a Spanish dancer. Very young Harry Morgan and Alan Hale Jr. play members of Payne's unit, Stanley Andrews plays a doctor, Hugh Beaumont an orderly, Frank Coglan Jr. a bell boy, Gordon Jones an MP and Walter Sande a pharmacist. I don't know this for a fact, but it looks like the film was conceived and made prior to Pearl Harbor and that the "boys go to war ending" was tacked on after the fact. Should have been better.