Operation Petticoat (1959) on Netflix
Approved19592h 4mComedyRomanceWar
A Japanese air raid sinks the USS Sea Tiger at its Philippine dock. Lieutenant Commander Matt Sherman patches the hull, hoping to reach Australia, with Lieutenant Nick Holden aboard.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.2/1017,852 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes81%
Trailer
Plot summary
Lieutenant Commander Matt Sherman is in the Philippines when a Japanese air raid hits the dock where the submarine USS Sea Tiger lies, and he sets his crew to patching it. He wants to get the boat to Darwin, Australia, ahead of the Japanese advance. The squadron commodore sends most of the crew to other boats and reassigns Lieutenant Nick Holden, an admiral's aide with no submarine training, to Sea Tiger. As supply officer, Holden scrounges and steals the materials the repairs call for. At Marinduque, Sherman agrees to take five stranded Army nurses aboard. Holden is drawn to Lieutenant Barbara Duran, while Sherman keeps running into the clumsy Lieutenant Dolores Crandall. Short of paint, the crew mixes red primer with white, and the hull ends up pale pink.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Operation Petticoat (1959)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Tony Curtis had joined the U.S. Navy during World War II partly because his hero, Cary Grant, had appeared in Destination Tokyo (1943); once he became a star, Curtis suggested making a film in which Grant would stare into a periscope as he did in that film.
- The pink submarine had real precedents: heat from the burning USS Sealion scorched the black paint off a nearby boat, which fought on with only her red lead undercoat visible, and commander Samuel David Dealey added pink to the standard light gray of his own submarine, believing a pinkish tint helped camouflage near dawn and dusk.
- Through his contract, Cary Grant's residuals from Operation Petticoat topped $3 million, making it the most profitable film of his career to date.
- When the story was revived as a TV series, Tony Curtis' own daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, was cast as Lieutenant Barbara Duran.
- Jeff Chandler was originally set to play Matt Sherman but pulled out to film The Jayhawkers instead, and Tina Louise turned down the role of one of the nurses because she felt the film had too many sex jokes.
