While we’re having a little local video festival this week, take a gander at this scene from “Objective, Burma!” If you’re the impatient type, you can jump ahead to about 1:10, where Lt. Jacobs (played by Nichols, NY native and Cornell graduate William Prince) explains the place he’d rather be than Burma: Cannonball Island, Central Park. “Schenectady, New York. They have a Central Park, too, with this island in the middle. Sorta take your girl there if you’re real friendly.”
Then there’s the mention of the Gazette, and the family grocery store on Crane Street (we’ll forgive the comment that it’s “right by the locomotive works”). And Union College.
And then comes the greatest line in cinematic history:
“And if only more folks back home would realize that Crane Street, Schenectady, runs all the way to Burma, this’d be the last war.”
A friend pointed me to a Daily Gazette article from a few years back that gave credit for the screenplay to Ranald McDougall, who was from the Electric City; the story’s author Alvah Bessie had no such connection, so it must have been a personal addition from McDougall, for whom this is the first screenwriting credit.