No Time for Sergeants (1958)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

There isn't much to say about this. When Jim Nabors played Gomer Pyle in the Marine Corps, every plot was the same. He did something to upset the Sergeant. Here it is one thing after another with hayseed Andy Griffith causing great pain to another sergeant. No matter how bad it gets, he always lands on his feet. As a matter of fact he actually innovates, making things run smoother. He, of course, has no knowledge of how the military is supposed to work, so it's often just an accident. Griffith is really pretty funny and carries the whole show on his back. His long suffering sergeant does a pretty good slow burn as things fall apart.

"Little Caesar" director Mervyn LeRoy launched Andy Griffith's career as a lightweight comedian with the military service comedy "No Time for Sergeants" co-starring Don Knotts, Raymond Bailey, and Myron McCormick. Mac Hyman's 1954 bestseller was adapted initially as an episode of the television anthology series "The United States Steel Hour" in 1955 and was later turned into a Broadway play written by Ira Levin. Griffith and McCormick appeared in the play along with Knotts who made his stage debut. Eventually, by 1958, the success of the television show and the Broadway play spawned the Warner Brothers' release with Griffith, McCormick, Knotts and many of the original cast reprising their roles. This is a hilarious movie about a Georgia hillbilly who is drafted into the U.S. Air Force. Will Stockdale (Andy Griffith of "A Face in the Crowd") lives on a remote farm with his father, Pa Stockdale (veteran B-movie character actor William Fawcett), who has been destroying the letters that the draft board has been sending. A representative from the draft board, Mr. McKinney (Dub Taylor of "Bonnie & Clyde"), arrives and drags Will off in handcuffs. At the draft board in town, McKinney cuffs Will to an old fashioned gas pump with a crank handle and leaves the new recruits under the supervision of a former ROTC cadet, Irving S. Blanchard (Murray Hamilton of "Jaws"), who thinks that he is Mr. Cool incarnate. The last recruit to arrive at the bus depot is Ben Whitledge (a bespectacled Nick Adams of "Hell Is For Heroes") who has a letter that he must get to the commandant of the base where they are bound. Several generations of Ben's family have served in the infantry, and Ben wants desperately to get a transfer into the Army. When Irving takes Ben's letter away from him to read it, Will intervenes after he pulls the crank handle off the pump. This represents Will's first demonstration of his strength.Basically, everybody believes that Will is a hick. Of course, they are correct in most respects. At the U.S.A.F boot camp, Master Sergeant Orville C. King (Myron McCormick of "Winterset")presides over the recruits. No sooner have the recruits settled in than they ridicule Will for being a country bumpkin. Quickly, Will displays his prowess in hand-to-hand combat and licks Irving and his cohorts. This ruckus awakens the sleeping Sgt. King who punishes Will by putting him in charge of the latrine. King emphasizes that the latrine needs to be sparkling when the base captain inspects it. Much to King's surprise, Will polishes everything until it gleams. When the Captain inspects the latrine, he is astonished. King is basking in this glory until Will informs the captain that King has made him a 'P.L.O.,' otherwise known as a Permanent Latrine Orderly. At the same time, King has kept Will in the latrine rather than sending him off with the other recruits to participate in all the required military exams and paper work. The Captain threatens to bust King to a private if he doesn't have Will classified. Meantime, Ben groans miserably about being in the air force and Will tries to get King to get them a transfer. King wants to make Will look inferior to the rest of them so Irving and he take Will to a night club and try to get him drunk. Ironically, Will guzzles everything that they put in front of him from a bigger glasses and doesn't even get tipsy. He explains afterward that he was weened on his pappy's moonshine. Will leaves about the same time that King and Irving get into a brawl with an infantryman. Miraculously, King evades the Military Police, but he is caught entering the barracks and busted to private. During this amusing scene, Will demonstrates to the Base Colonel (Raymond Bailey of "The Beverly Hillbillies")a contraption that enables him to raise all the steer horned toilet seats to attention."No Time for Sergeants" was produced during a simpler time when comedy was more straightforward and less profane. The irony again is that everybody mistakes Will for an idiot when he has more common sense that most of them. The concluding scene has Will and Ben in a B-25 flying into an arena when the Army plans to detonate an A-bomb. Our heroes bail out but the B-25 reverses course and lands without damage. Now, the military praises the sacrifice that Will and Pete made until the Generals who concocted the ceremony has to quickly fix things. The comedy is clean and cute and Griffith has a field day making everybody else look like idiots. "No Time for Sergeants" is a memorably side-splitting movie not to be missed.

Andy Griffith stars as a total misfit hillbilly who is drafted into the military and makes a mess of most everything. To make things worse, poor Sergeant King ends up on the receiving end of most of the mess--and it's hilarious to see this poor guy have his career destroyed again and again.I always liked this cute little film and only recently did I learn that it first was a made for television play, then a Broadway show and finally this movie. In each, Andy Griffith gave a magnificent performance as Will Stockdale--the nicest and stupidest man in the entire US Air Force. Here in the movie you have a prologue that's new as well as the entire last portion of the film about an airplane accident--and all the rest is basically the teleplay. The only major difference other than these is the style, as Griffith talked to the audience a lot more in the TV program--something that made it more enjoyable than this already entertaining plot.I'd give the teleplay a 10--and it's one of the best things made for television during this golden era. I give the movie a 9. It's not quite as funny--and most of this seems to be because the new material, while good, just doesn't maintain the same wonderful momentum of the teleplay. My advice is see BOTH...you can't help but enjoy them and have a wonderful time.

This has to be one of the best military comedies ever, and (even though I seldom hear it mentioned) the inspiration for Gomer Pyle. (Of course, non-fans of Gomer think of it as a POOR version of this story, but I've always liked both.) I've always noticed partly the same thing as "theowinthrop" - that, unlike a lot of stories about naive, innocent characters, it doesn't really try to point to a lesson. In fact, the characters never really "grow." And in fact, it ends up very much the way it starts - all of which is just fine, really. This movie has about all you could ask for in its cast. Along with the main actors, it has people like James Milhollin playing one of his great uptight characters and Howard Smith playing one of his comical authority figures. Griffith, Adams and McCormick were great in their roles, you get to see Griffith and Don Knotts together long before their show, and you get to see Jamie Farr in a military comedy long before MASH. And then there's Murray Hamilton. To me, THIS was that actor's best part (never mind Jaws and The Graduate!). It took me a long while to realize how much of a stock character "Irving" is in army comedies - the overly "cool" member of the group, often a southerner (especially in ' 50s and early ' 60s ones). But Hamilton made the part just right.