The New Pictures

Don't Go Near the Water (MGM) is based on William Brinkley's nutty little bestselling novel about Navy public relations. Slickly directed by Charles Walters (High Society), it turns out to be at its best a gloriously goofy show.

The heroes of this naval epic of World War II are the officers and men of a P.R.O. outfit stationed on a Pacific island called Tulura. Theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to dream of the bounding main as they stare at the waves in the water-cooler, arid to suffer in silence one of the subtler horrors of war: Lieut. Commander Clinton T. Nash (Fred Clark), a sort of sugar-coated Queeg. This pill is secretly known, to those who have to take him. as "Marblehead" ("And not just because he is bald"). In civilian life Marblehead was a broker (Merrill Lynch, Pierce. Fenner & Beane), and he got himself a direct commission "without the corrupting effect of any intervening naval training." He compensates for this deficiency by soaking his gold braid in brine whenever the green seems to be wearing off, and by declaring loud and often, in peculiarly defective sailor-Latin ("You're getting my bilge up!"), that a P.R.O. does just as much to win the war as an LST.

Marblehead goes to disastrous lengths to prove the point. He whips up a Hollywood-type talent search for "the typical Navyman," whom he personally selects, sight unseen, because he likes the fellow's name: Farragut Jones. It represents the finest in Navy tradition, but from the first word uttered by Boatswain's Mate Jones (Mickey Shaughnessy)--a short, unpleasant sound that is blotted from the sound track by a stentorian beep--it is apparent that he represents one of the worst mistakes a recruiting officer ever made. Lieut. Siegel (Glenn Ford), Marblehead's chief whipping boy, is assigned to rectify the error, and manages to teach the brute a few appropriate words to say at war-bond rallies. Touched with gratitude after his first public ad-dresk Seaman Jones takes the opportunity to tell one and all, including the admiral himself, that Lieut. Siegel is "the best (BEEP!) officer I ever served under."

Marblehead's most pernicious problem is a leering, sneering, domineering war correspondent (Keenan Wynn) who would rather chase a bottle than a battle, and who likes to brag that he wears "a 7-5/8 [hat] and about the same size in dames." The problem becomes critical when the correspondent threatens to denounce Marblehead, in print, for building an officers' club while the men have none. Marblehead gets out of that one by forcing his officers to build the clubhouse themselves --a project that produces a gorgeous slapstick sequence, easily the funniest scene in the picture.

The picture has plenty of love interest (Anne Francis and Gia Scala), and even provides something in the way of a battle. Lieut. Siegel at one point sees service on a heavy cruiser--but it's only she-duty. He is assigned to look after a lady correspondent (Eva Gabor), who is all too easily persuaded to part with her panties, which are next seen fluttering from the halyards as the ship goes into battle. "Ggrrulfskrggrowlk!" roars the admiral, but a seaman standing by reminds him, with a jaw squared in patriotism, "Sir, that's what we're fighting for!"

Kiss Them for Me (20th Century-Fox). Frederic Wakeman's Shore Leave, a novel about World War II that was published 13 years ago, told the public some home truths about how civilians were living while servicemen were dying --good reading but bad box office at the time. Now that the issue is safely dead, this movie stages a mighty flashy funeral.

The heroes are three Navy aces (Gary Grant, Ray Walston, Larry Blyden) who hitch a ride back home for a four-day pass. "I came here to get drunk and chase girls." Grant announces grandly, but pretty soon an s.o.b. of a VIP (Leif Erickson) tries to pull him off the girls and push him on a stage--to make like a hero for war workers. The rest of the story describes how Grant gets even with the fellow by making time with his girl (Suzy Parker), and how in four days the three flyers get so sick of looking at civilians they decide they would rather go back and face Japs.

Wakeman tried to wake the public with sweet reason, but he also used the whiplash, and the script still lays it on. "Ain't that beautiful?" sighs one of the airmen, with the blissful look of a man falling asleep after a hard day's work, as he listens to a radio commercial. "Everybody still selling things to everybody else." And when asked what he is fighting for, Grant blandly quotes the cornball who declared, "I'm fighting for my right to boo the Dodgers." But the moviemakers, well aware that the script is flogging a dead horse, keep their actors busy swinging the bladder like a stageful of burlesque bananas.

Jayne Mansfield, cast as a swing-shift susie whose hair is "natural except for color," and who appreciates a uniform "to the fullest extent," fills a disproportionate amount of screen time, not to mention space. But the show is saved at almost every turn by Actor Grant. At 53, he is perhaps the only one of the older generation of movie heroes who can still walk into a closeup without pinning up his jowls. And even a bad line somehow seems great when Gary pays it out as smooth as tooth paste. As for a good line, he can drop it like a radioactive potato. Item: "What is your ex-wife calling you about?" asks Actress Parker. And Grant, fumbling for a bottle, murmurs vaguely: "Dunno. Maybe she wants to consummate the divorce."

Operation Mad Ball (Columbia), according to some wacky prerelease publicity, is based on the bestselling book, Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary. Anybody who enjoyed the book had better skip the picture--as usual, Hollywood has changed the story. The new one does not end with "zymurgy." but with "clinch."' And besides, it sounds less like Webster than the Army Manual, read upside down and backwards at the top of a top kick's lungs. In short, OMB is routine regimental farce, but fast and snafurious.

Jack Lemmon is the hero--a buck private and bigtime operator in a unit waiting to be shipped home from Europe after World War II. TV's Ernie Kovacs is the villain--the unit's second-in-command, who is bound and determined, as soon as he is mustered out, to run for the U.S. Senate. In his first movie role, Comic Kovacs is approximately terrific, the funniest new funnyface that has been seen on the screen in years. His sneeringly ingratiating personality has all the morbid fascination of a mentholated cigar.

The plot turns on the old snooper-duper situation. Lemmon & Co. are determined to have a mad ball in a neighboring village, and invite all the nurses --even though it's breaking the book for enlisted men and officers to "socialize."' But that dog Kovacs. a fellow with a suspicious nature and an investigative turn of mind, soon begins to sniff the wind. "They're up to something!" he mutters. "I can smell it! I can taste it!" Day after day his spies report--nothing. Day after day, in snap inspections, he finds--nothing.

In the end, with a wonderfully silly assist from Mickey Rooney, the boys have their ball, and the rat gets caught in his own trap. Disguised as a private, Captain Kovacs races cross-country in an Army truck to break up the party, blissfully unaware that the truck is loaded with German prisoners. When the M.P.s, tipped off by Lemmon, accuse him of engineering an escape, Kovacs blusters and pulls rank. Alas, nobody will believe him, and he is hauled off to the stockade, a broken man who can only point piteously at a big, black, fiercely aggressive mustache that no longer seems to impress anybody. "It's me," he says pleadingly. "Don't you remember me?"

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