A Pleasant Surprise from Warner Bros.
I used to like to play tv trivia online. One of my favorite questions was "What was the other WWII infantry program that started the same year as Combat on ABC but only lasted 1 year to Combat's 5. The answer is The Gallant Men.
The Gallant Men premiered on ABC in 1962 at 7:30 Friday nights. Combat premiered the same year on the same network on Tuesday night at 7:30. They both were good shows, but Combat was better.
Combat concerned an infantry squad slogging through France, The Gallant Men concerned a squad slogging through Italy. The Gallant Men was produced by Warner Bros. It starred a Warner contract player, Robert McQueeney as an Ernie Pyle-type war correspondent, Conley Wright. The war is seen through his eyes. William Reynolds also starred as Capt. Jim Benedict. (After this series, Reynolds replaced Stephen Brooks as Efrem Zimbalist's partner on The FBI. Then like Brooks, he stupidly left the series early himself.) The rest of the cast included ex-boxer...
Good Show - Questionable DVD Quality
I bought three different titles of these manufactured-on-demand (MOD) products: "The Gallant Men", "Benson" (season 2) and "The Courtship of Eddie's Father" (season 1). All sets have been burned on DVD-R's just as you would burn a CD or DVD on your computer. Who knows what the quality of the DVD R disk is?
What you get are a set of disks that may or may not play on your DVD player. A couple of disks in each set may play on some players, but I struggled to find a complete set that would play on both of my players. I had to return these sets several times to collect disks that would play.
Essentially, the studio is so paranoid about copy protection that they won't let these be played on many players. The interesting thing is that I had no trouble creating back-up copies!! In other words; they have succeeded in frustrating people that want to play what they bought, but can't prevent people from copying! I backed-up all of these sets onto my own DVD's and can now...
The Gallant Men of Leisure
Who ever said this is no Combat was right!!!! These GI's do more singing than shooting. A better title would be a soldiers life of R&R.
I did not know you could fire a BAR without your finger on the trigger or that the M1 carbine was fully automatic!!! The same village is used over and over, along
with same footage of town battle scenes. The actors (if you want to be kind) do not act or move like soldiers. The only one who does a good job is Rob Mcqueeney and
he's not a soldier but a war correspondent. The saving grace is the guest stars and all the WWII war film footage. I was 12 when this show aired and thats why it
appealed to me, as most shows of my youth hold fond memories (especislly westerns) I didn't have much memory of this show. Now I know why!!!
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