180 JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN
get abandoned on the battlefield, alone and forgotten? Not in my Marine Corps.”
Interviewed by an L.A. Times staff writer after seeing the film at a theater near
Swofford’s home base, Camp Pendleton, active- duty and retired Marines gave
Jarhead mixed reviews. A retired Marine thought that “too often, Jarhead shows
Swofford and his buddies acting “more like a college fraternity house than a
disciplined Marine unit.” However, Marines who saw the film praised it for its
accurate portrayal of “Semper Fi” comradery: kinship- like bonds formed in a
combat zone that last a lifetime (Perry, 2005).Johnny Got His Gun (1971)
Synopsis
Johnny Got His Gun is an American anti- war film written and directed by Dalton
Trumbo and starring Timothy Bottoms, Kathy Fields, Marsha Hunt, Jason Robards,
Donald Sutherland, and Diane Varsi. Based on Trumbo’s eponymous 1939 novel,
the film concerns an American World War I soldier who survives the loss of all
four limbs and most of his face in a shell blast and is subsequently consigned to a
living death in a military hospital.Background
According to Dalton Trumbo, his searing anti- war novel, Johnny Got His Gun was
inspired by newspaper accounts regarding two grievously wounded WWI soldiers,
one Canadian, the other British. On a trip to Canada in August 1927 the Prince of
Wales visited a military fa cil i ty for soldiers and encountered a limbless and mostly
faceless soldier, with whom he could only communicate by kissing the man on
the forehead. The other case involved a British major who was “so torn up that he
was deliberately reported missing in action. It was not until years later [1933]—
after the victim had fi nally died alone in a military hospital, that his family learned
the truth” (Flatley, p. 79). Haunted by images of intact minds trapped inside shat-
tered bodies, Trumbo wrote Johnny Got His Gun in 1938, a novel about an Ameri-
can soldier with his face and limbs blown off but still possessed of his full mental
faculties (the book’s title ironically references the popu lar WWI recruitment song,
“Over There,” by George M. Cohan, which contains the opt- repeated phrase, “John-
nie get your gun”). Ironically published on 3 September 1939— just two days after
the start of World War II— Johnny Got His Gun sold over 18,000 copies and won the
National Book Award (then called the American Book Sellers Award). In 1964
Trumbo and Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel collaborated on a screen adaptation
of Johnny in Mexico but by the time Trumbo had the script finished in Septem-
ber 1965, Buñuel’s producer, Gustavo Alatriste, had run out of money so the proj-
ect was scrapped. The escalating war in Vietnam once again made Johnny Got His
Gun topical and reignited Trumbo’s pacifist zeal; he pitched his script all over Hol-
lywood but it was rejected 17 times before a production deal was signed with
producer Bruce Campbell in April 1968. Though he was 63 and had never directed
a film, Trumbo deci ded to direct. Though offered $800,000 in financing from Allied