General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 202610 min read

The Sullivans (1944 film)

The Sullivans is a 1944 American biographical drama directed by Lloyd Bacon, released by Twentieth Century-Fox and retitled The Fighting Sullivans two months after its premiere. It dramatizes the true story of the five Sullivan brothers of Waterloo, Iowa, who enlisted in the Navy together after Pearl Harbor and were all killed in November 1942 when the cruiser USS Juneau was sunk during the battle of Guadalcanal.¹

Key fact	Detail
Original and later title	Released as The Sullivans in February 1944; retitled The Fighting Sullivans two months later after the picture failed to attract large audiences¹
Director and producer	Lloyd Bacon directed; Sam Jaffe produced, with Robert T. Kane as associate producer²
Writers	Screenplay by Mary McCall Jr.; story by Edward Doherty and Jules Schermer²
Principal cast	Anne Baxter (Katherine Mary), Thomas Mitchell (Thomas F. Sullivan), Selena Royle (Alleta Sullivan), Ward Bond (Commander Robinson), Bobby Driscoll (Al as a child)¹
Print details	111–112 minutes, black and white, Western Electric sound, 12 reels; New York opening 9 February 1944, Los Angeles opening 23 February 1944³
Historical basis	George, Francis, Joseph, Madison, and Albert Sullivan died aboard the cruiser Juneau in November 1942; only ten seamen survived the attack¹
Legacy	The story prompted a Navy policy that family members could not serve on the same vessel during wartime, and served as one of the inspirations for Saving Private Ryan (1998)¹^•⁴

Spoilers

Plot

Waterloo, Iowa, in the years from the late 1920s through the early 1940s. Tom Sullivan (Thomas Mitchell) and his wife Alleta (Selena Royle) raise six children in a small, crowded house: five boys, George, Frank, Joe, Matt, and Al, and a daughter, Genevieve (Anne Baxter). The film opens with each boy being baptized by name at the local Catholic church, parents and godparents lined up beside the priest, and religion keeps returning through the picture: Al's First Confession, his First Communion, the family in the pews.¹¹

Most of the running time is simply childhood. The boys scrape boats on the river, brawl with each other and with the neighborhood kids, torment their sister, and get hauled back into line by a father whose exasperation is half pride. The film is in no hurry; it wants the viewer to know all five as individuals, the ringleader, the steady one, the baby, long before anything military happens. Al grows up, falls for a girl named Katherine, and marries her at the same altar where he was baptized and took his first communion, so that by the end one character has received four sacraments on screen.¹¹

Then Pearl Harbor. The five brothers, now young men drifting through Depression-era work, decide they will enlist together and refuse to be separated, insisting on assignment to the same ship. The Navy, remarkably, agrees. Genevieve does her part by joining the WAVES. The parents' quiet resistance and eventual surrender becomes the emotional spine of the picture: this is as much a film about the people left behind as about the boys who leave.¹²

The most famous shot in the film is the departure. The four brothers march off to war arm in arm, rounding a neighborhood street corner in step, while Al runs to catch up and Katherine sends her husband off with their baby in her arms. It is the image the film was built to produce, and it is staged without music swelling over it, just five men and a street they grew up on.¹³

The service section is brief. The brothers ship out together on the light cruiser USS Juneau, write cheerful letters home, and the film keeps the family in Iowa as its center of gravity. Then the telegram comes. A naval officer, Cmdr. Robinson (Ward Bond), arrives at the house, and when Alleta asks which of her sons is gone, he answers: "All five." The real Juneau was torpedoed on November 13, 1942, after the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal; four of the brothers died when the ship sank, while George, who had survived the sinking, later died adrift at sea with the other survivors.¹⁴

The film's true climax happens back in Iowa, not at sea. Tom Sullivan, undone by the news, boards his train for work as he always has. As it passes the water tower where his boys once stood and waved to him, he gives it a small salute, and then finally breaks down. The gesture is almost austere, and it is the moment people remember the film by.¹⁴^•¹⁵

The ending converts grief into resolve. The parents visit defense plants and sell war bonds, and in a coda rooted in fact, Mrs. Sullivan christens a destroyer named in honor of her sons, the USS The Sullivans, launched in April 1943.¹

Characters

Tom Sullivan (Thomas Mitchell) is the father, a railroader who endures five sons' chaos with bemused humor in the early scenes and carries the film's grief in the last reel. Mitchell, fresh off a run of great 1939 roles, is the anchor; his restraint in the final scenes is what keeps the sentimentality honest.

Alleta Sullivan (Selena Royle) is the mother, quieter than Tom, and the one who asks the question the whole theater dreads. Her work selling war bonds after the boys' deaths mirrors what the real Alleta did.

Genevieve, the sister (Anne Baxter), gets a real arc rather than a token role, joining the WAVES and standing in for the audience's own urge to do something.

The five brothers are played as a believable unit with real physical ease among them: John Alvin as Matt and George Offerman, Jr. as Joe, both of whom went on to long careers, with the other brothers filled out by young contract actors.⁶

Cmdr. Robinson (Ward Bond) is the officer who delivers the news, and his gentle handling of the scene is part of why it works.

Interpretations and controversies

The film has no debated ending, but it has a famous legacy: the real brothers' deaths, all five on one ship, led the Navy to adopt a policy of separating siblings, and Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, whose rescue premise is based on the parallel story of the Niland brothers, shares the premise of a military family tragedy and a rescue mission built around it.¹⁶

Sequels, prequels, and universe

None. The story continued in real life: in August 1995, Al's granddaughter christened a second destroyer named for the Sullivans.¹

Historical background

Drawing on the real story of George, Francis, Joseph, Madison, and Albert Sullivan, the movie tells of the five brothers, all serving on the cruiser Juneau, who lost their lives in combat at the battle of Guadalcanal in November 1942. George and Francis had previously served a tour in the Navy; after the attack on Pearl Harbor they enlisted with their younger brothers to avenge a lost friend. The brothers obtained special permission to serve together on the same ship.¹

The loss of all five brothers in a single sinking, with only ten seamen surviving the attack on the Juneau, affected the American public powerfully. The brothers had become minor celebrities before their deaths: newspapers had picked up the story of five patriotic brothers who enlisted on the same day and refused separation, and the launching of the Juneau had received national coverage because the ship carried them.⁵ After the deaths, the Navy officially declared that family members could not serve on the same vessel during wartime, and the parents, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Sullivan, traveled extensively, visiting defense plants and selling war bonds. On 4 April 1943, Mrs. Sullivan christened a destroyer named in honor of her sons.¹

Production

By March 1943 Twentieth Century-Fox had announced it would make a film about the Sullivans. According to a 15 March 1943 Hollywood Reporter item, producer Sam Jaffe and director Lloyd Bacon announced the project, with writer Jules Schermer also slated as producer. The film was made with the cooperation of the Navy and the Sullivan family, and the family members, including Thomas, Alleta, Genevieve, and Katherine Mary Sullivan, served as technical advisers.¹^•³

Production ran from early September to mid-November 1943, with location work in Santa Rosa, California. The producers canceled a planned trip to the San Diego naval base when they decided to limit the war footage to the sinking of the Juneau and to include no other scenes of the brothers in uniform. A 12 July 1943 news item stated that the Sullivans would share in the proceeds of the picture.¹

Because so many actors were serving in the military, there was a shortage of available talent, so the producers conducted a publicized search for actors to play the brothers as adults and as children; wartime restrictions limited screen tests to 50 feet of film each. Of the ten actors cast in those roles, only the unbilled Bobby Driscoll became relatively well known. James Cardwell, who played George, was found through the search and signed to a seven-year Fox contract.⁶

Alfred Newman was music director, with Cyril J. Mockridge composing; the film uses the songs "You'll Never Know" (Harry Warren) and "Anchors Aweigh" (Charles A. Zimmerman).¹

Story and reception

The narrative follows Thomas and Alleta Sullivan of Waterloo, Iowa, through the christenings of their children from 1914 to 1922, the brothers' Depression-era boyhood, and their decision after Pearl Harbor to enlist together on the condition that they serve on the same ship. The film ends with the loss of the Juneau and the naval officer, played by Ward Bond, delivering the news to the parents.³^•⁷

Despite its subject, the film devotes little time to combat: the brothers' military service occupies only a few minutes near the end. Reviewing for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther wrote, "It is a story of typical Americans, with love of home and love of family at its core....This is a story of why the Sullivans fought, not how."⁶ A 1944 Washington reviewer likewise described it as "a homely and warmly human study of middle-class family life" rather than a harrowing war picture.⁵

The film opened in New York on 9 February 1944 and in Los Angeles on 23 February. After it failed to attract large audiences, Fox executives changed the title to The Fighting Sullivans two months after release, a move the Hollywood Reporter described as emulating "a successful New Jersey showman with a genius for redundancy."¹ Later assessments have been favorable: Rotten Tomatoes records a 100% Tomatometer from five critics and an 87% audience score, and the film historian Bruce Kuklick, in a 2018 Journal of American History review, called it one of the most popular propaganda movies of World War II, noting that much of the picture reworks the tropes of the Our Gang and Andy Hardy series.⁸^•⁹

Significance

Contemporaries understood the film as both commemorative and normative. The film scholar Lawrence Suid wrote that in becoming the medium for perpetuating the significance of the Sullivan boys, "the film provided at least as much value to the war effort as any combat movie made during the conflict."⁵ Glenn Erickson's DVD review describes it as a serious piece of sentimental wartime propaganda that functioned less as a defense of war policy than as a collective memorial to lost war veterans.⁷

The story's afterlife extended well beyond 1944. Everyone watching the film in 1944 knew that the true story had prompted the change in policy about family members serving together, and the circumstances served as one of the inspirations for Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998), whose premise of repatriating a soldier whose brothers have died draws on the fates of the Sullivans and the Niland brothers.⁴^•¹⁰ The Navy itself honored the family twice more: Al's granddaughter christened another destroyer named after the Sullivans in August 1995.¹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026