The Silver Screen Oasis

This is based on a true story and the movie is well acted. Thomas Mitchell, Selena Royle and the 5 brothers including Bobby Driscoll turn in good performances. Anne Baxter is also hard to go unnoticed. Heart wrenching to say the least, still deeply moving after more than half a century.

Hollywood chose to treat the Sullivan story not as a war story but as a family portrait of how Americans wanted to feel about themselves.
The Sullivans are a working class Irish-American family from Waterloo, Iowa with five sons and a daughter. The father was a railroad freight conductor. They are shown as close knit, hard working, good hearted, religious, loyal, loving, pugnacious and having a strong sense of right and wrong. They get through tough times by sticking together, and the boys learn to stand up for what's right. Given their upbringing, it is inevitably that the Sullivan boys (and by inference all the working class GIs and sailors
like them), march down to the recruiting office to join up right after Pearl Harbor.

The USS Sullivans is now anchored in a Naval Park in Buffalo, NY. This destroyer was named in honor of the Sullivan Brothers who all lost their life during the battle of Guadalcanal in 1942 on the USS Juneau.

Hi mongo:

Am I correct in believing this family was the reason for the rule that at least one son not be drafted or accepted in any military branch to ensure the family name be continued?

Also, I think the Sullivan story was the inspiration for Saving Private Ryan.

Are these assumptions correct?

Anne

Hi Anne,
There's a popular misconception about the so-called "Sullivan Law" but it pertains to something altogether different. Something to do with firearms, I believe.
After the five Sullivan brothers were killed at sea, a law was proposed but never enacted.

Thanks Dewey:

I wasn't sure. But it was a beautiful movie, and I'm surprised it doesn't have more notoriety than it does. Those kids were such typical little boys, you couldn't help but love them.

Anne

Dewey1960 wrote:Hi Anne,
There's a popular misconception about the so-called "Sullivan Law" but it pertains to something altogether different. Something to do with firearms, I believe.
After the five Sullivan brothers were killed at sea, a law was proposed but never enacted.

Nevertheless, I believe there is a military regulation (or maybe it's just the Navy) that does not allow siblings or parent-child pairs serve on the same ships, or at least discourages them from doing so -- I seem to remember my ex-husband, a 20-year Navy man, mentioning this.