The New Pictures

The D.I. (Mark VII; Warner) is a stiff salute from TV Star Jack (Dragnet) Webb to the Marine Corps drill instructor. A raucous prowl through the barracks and across the drill fields of Parris Island, the film is not based upon last year's tragic "death march" of a recruit platoon into the Carolina swamps. Made with the blessing and help of the Marine Corps, The D.I. might otherwise almost seem to be anti-Corps propaganda, su ruggedly, almost brutally does it portray the making of a young leatherneck.

The leatherneck maker, Sergeant Jim Moore (Webb), chews callow boys and spits marines. He shouts fear into his boots, and they shout courage back at him. His undeviating training code: if I don't almost kill you in this process, an enemy will some day make you "dead, dead, dead!" The fragile axis of the plot, a moral weakling from a Corps-dedicated family, naturally turns eventually into the pride of his platoon. Sergeant Webb surprises in the end. Just when he might be expected, for the good of the Marines, to mow down his whole motley lot of boots with a Tommy gun, he sends them on, all alive.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (Hal Wallis; Paramount). In Hollywood westerns, as in popular legends of every age, the men's men are apt to be just big overgrown boys, and in chasing the villain they are actually running away from the woman. But in this highbrow horse opera, the lill-death-do-us-partnership is in some ways a little too close for comfort.

One of the heroes is Wyatt Earp (Burt Lancaster), the famous marshal of Dodge City; the other is Doc Holliday (Kirk Douglas), a dentist who is terribly fast on the draw. Wyatt saves Doc from a lynch mob. and that is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Doc has been living with a fallen woman (Jo Van Fleet), but pretty soon he throws her back in the gutter and takes up with Earp instead. He follows Earp everywhere, reeking of whisky and gratitude, and twice saves his life from bushwhackers. "Ya done it again. Doc." says Marshal Earp. making a manly effort to control his trembling lip. "We're even." Doc mumbles shyly, and lowers his eyes.

The beautiful friendship gets thicker and thicker. The marshal displays a tender concern for his friend's health, nags him about his drinking, clucks about his tubercular cough. In the end. Doc staggers up from his deathbed and reels out "to die with the only friend I ever had.'' They both survive, and in the moment conventionally occupied by the clinch, the two heroes stand face to face. In a voice charged with emotion, the marshal says: "I just wantcha ta know I'd a never made it withoutcha." And as he drags himself off to join the gorgeous, redheaded heroine (Rhonda Fleming), Actor Lancaster looks like a man who is heading for nothing better than the electric chair.

The Wayward Bus (20th Century-Fox) takes a pretty wild ride down a California cutoff from Tobacco Road. Danger: an unusual number of soft shoulders and hairpin turns. What's more, the plot of John Steinbeck's 1947 bestseller, which this picture generally follows, is almost as confusing and misleading, as the road signs in the back country it is set in. But somehow or other, Hollywood's Bus barrels lustily along until, just before the end of the trip, it hits the sawdust trail.

Among the passengers: a salesman (Dan Dailey) with a novelty line, who tries it out on a blonde across the aisle (Jayne Mansfield); a couple of harried marrieds who give their boy-crazy daughter (Dolores Michaels) no peace. As the trip starts, the daughter makes a pass at the driver of the bus (Rick Jason), who has just left his wife (Joan Collins) because she drinks too much and smooches too little. Meanwhile, the salesman is pitching for the blonde: "I have depths, honest. I think I have." And back at the depot the highway patrol drops in on the driver's wife to see if maybe she isn't good for "a slice of pie."

Comes a storm. Landslides block the road. Bridges wash out. The bus stops dead in a pothole. The driver and the daughter end up in a barn. But at the catchall conclusion the driver goes back to his wife, the daughter marries a basketball coach, and the salesman wins the blonde to wife by promising her a stove that plays Tenderly when the steak is done. And Jayne Mansfield looks dumb enough to believe him.

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