For those of you who know Andy Griffith best as the country wise sheriff of Mayberry or as the slick country lawyer Ben Matlock it might come as a surprise that Griffith got his first big career break playing that most ingenuous of military draftees Will Stockdale in No Time For Sergeants first on Broadway and then in this film version. Griffith is such a hick he makes Gomer Pyle look as sophisticated as Noel Coward.

Stockdale is one of those people who glides through life while chaos erupts all around him. Because his father William Fawcett had kept his draft letters from him, when the Air Force finally does come to get him. The man whom the chaos effects the most is his sergeant at the classification center played by Myron McCormick in the best world weary tradition he can muster.

Stockdale's best friend is Nick Adams, a kid from a military tradition family who wants the Army Infantry and not the Air Force and bemoans his fate through most of the film. He convinces Griffith of the fact that the infantry does the real fighting and everyone else just helps out occasionally. Like many other things Griffith takes them to heart and repeats them verbatim always at the wrong time. It's the heart of the humor in No Time For Sergeants.

No Time For Sergeants ran for 796 performances on Broadway during the 1955-57 season and Griffith, McCormick, Don Knotts, and James Milhollin all repeat their roles from Broadway. This not the Andy Griffith Show is the first time Knotts and Griffith work together. Knotts plays a corporal at the classification center administering the manual dexterity test and how Griffith solves it is Gordian Knot like. But his session with psychiatrist James Millhollin is the funniest thing in the film.

No Time For Sergeants is one of the best military comedies ever done on stage and screen. Do not miss it if broadcast.

I watched this movie begrudgingly one day and I was amazed at how funny it was. It caught me completely off guard. The drill sergeant is played to perfection by Myron McCormick, whose life is made miserable by hayseed Griffith. Many very funny vignettes, the bar scene still has me LOL, as does much of the movie. Watch and enjoy.

... plus it is fun too! This is really worth watching for two reasons. It is obviously a blueprint for the popular spin-off TV show "Gomer Pyle USMC" starring Jim Nabors in the part played here by Andy Griffith, and it is interesting to make comparisons between the two. Secondly, it really is part of a tribute to the great yet unappreciated range Andy Griffith had as an actor. Here he plays the yokel as well-meaning good guy, anxious to serve his country but just too friendly and green to fully comprehend the discipline he is under in training camp. He thinks it is an honor when the sergeant gives him latrine duty, and his version of the 21-gun salute when the latrine is inspected is truly hilarious. Watch this and then watch him play the yokel as bad guy in "A Face in the Crowd".