![]() ![]() And Will, in his interest to please, makes the mistake of believing a speech given by the recruits' training Sergeant King (Myron McCormick) that he is always available to advise them (King's idea of advise is anything within the rules to get the idiots away from him when he does not have to be bothered with his training of them). Only one recruit, Ben (Nick Adams), befriends Will. He is generally sneered at in the barracks by the other recruits, like Irving Blanchard (Murray Hamilton), who are more urban centered. He actually would have preferred the Army, which he feels is where the real military action is given in war time. Will Stockdale (Andy Griffith) is a draftee from the hill country of the south, and he is soon inducted into the Air Force. NO TIME FOR SERGEANTS is an example of this - and a successful one. But with it's rules and protocols, it is subject (occasionally) to satires showing the limitations of such rules and protocols. Military has made mistakes - possibly it is in the middle of several right now. No Time For Sergeants is one of the best military comedies ever done on stage and screen. But his session with psychiatrist James Millhollin is the funniest thing in the film. Knotts plays a corporal at the classification center administering the manual dexterity test and how Griffith solves it is Gordian Knot like. This not the Andy Griffith Show is the first time Knotts and Griffith work together. No Time For Sergeants ran for 796 performances on Broadway during the 1955-57 season and Griffith, McCormick, Don Knotts, and James Milhollin all repeat their roles from Broadway. It's the heart of the humor in No Time For Sergeants. Like many other things Griffith takes them to heart and repeats them verbatim always at the wrong time. He convinces Griffith of the fact that the infantry does the real fighting and everyone else just helps out occasionally. Stockdale's best friend is Nick Adams, a kid from a military tradition family who wants the Army Infantry and not the Air Force and bemoans his fate through most of the film. The man whom the chaos effects the most is his sergeant at the classification center played by Myron McCormick in the best world weary tradition he can muster. Because his father William Fawcett had kept his draft letters from him, when the Air Force finally does come to get him. Stockdale is one of those people who glides through life while chaos erupts all around him. Griffith is such a hick he makes Gomer Pyle look as sophisticated as Noel Coward. ![]() For those of you who know Andy Griffith best as the country wise sheriff of Mayberry or as the slick country lawyer Ben Matlock it might come as a surprise that Griffith got his first big career break playing that most ingenuous of military draftees Will Stockdale in No Time For Sergeants first on Broadway and then in this film version. ![]()
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