Tell It to the Marines

George W. Hill, MGM, 1926. Lon Chaney is Sergeant O’Hara, a peacetime Marine who drills William Haines’s slacker and loses ground to him with nurse Norma Shearer. Location work with the Corps; Chaney became the first film actor the Marines named an honorary member, a fact MGM did not underplay. No hump, no clown white. It was among 1926’s stronger grossers and a picture Chaney said he liked. China-station reels follow the boot-camp comedy. Haines is the grin. Chaney is the man who cannot quite say what the girl means to him.