Tag Archives: Smedley Butler

Tell It To the Marines!

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Metro Goldwyn Mayer’s “Tell It To the Marines,” an interbellum silent film featuring the great Lon Chaney, began filming in the summer of 1926, specifically running from 7 June to 3 August, for a Christmas weekend release.

The first film made with the full cooperation of the service, its shooting locations included Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego and aboard the top-of-the-line Tennessee-class dreadnought USS California (BB-44) while on a port call at San Francisco, with active duty servicemembers filling in as extras.

I give you, some 100 years ago, the Corps’ two best-known bulldogs of the day: then-Brigadier General Smedley “Ol’ Gimlet Eye” Darlington Butler, then the commander of MCRDSD, and depot mascot “Sergeant Major Jiggs,” the first bulldog to “serve” in the Marine Corps, snapped between scenes in the filming of “Tell It To the Marines” in the summer of 1926.

Note the two MoHs on Butler’s salad bar. From the Smedley Butler Collection (COLL/3124), Marine Corps Archives & Special Collections

And, of course, Butler and BB-44, taken during the same summer.

The U.S. Battle Fleet steamed into San Francisco Bay, California, on 18 June 1926, where all 68 warships dropped anchor. This was the greatest number of warships that had steamed through the Gold Gate since the entire U.S. Fleet of 144 ships was there in April 1925. The photograph shows, left to right, in the foreground, Captain William H. Standley of USS California exchanging salutes with Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler, USMC. Courtesy of the San Francisco Maritime Museum, San Francisco, California. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph NH 68840

Lon Chaney, the first actor to be made an honorary Marine, would often state that this was his favorite film, and it was the biggest box office success of Chaney’s career.

Morphy’s earlier this year sold one of Butler’s China-made uniforms at auction.

The unlined summer uniform auctioned by Morphy’s was made by a Chinese tailor and bore inked Chinese letters on the inside. It is believed to have been made during Butler’s 3rd Brigade’s China Expedition. Its cloisonne ribbon bars were unquestionably made in China, likely Shanghai, and corresponded to Butler’s awards. The uniform (including undershirt and tie) remained with Butler’s family through the early 2000s, before entering the collector community.

In VG condition, it sold very near its high estimate, for $24,000.

Happy 137th, Smedley

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On this day in 1881 in West Chester, PA, Smedley Darlington Butler was authorized one body, human, which he used to join the Marines some 38 days before his 17th birthday during the great national crisis that was the Spanish–American War.

Some 34 years later, he retired as a full Maj. Gen (the highest rank authorised in the Corps at the time) after fighting in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the “Banana Wars,” and in France during the Great War, earning not just one but two Medals of Honor.

While in the Corps “The Fighting Quaker” wrote on counter insurgency warfare which was later published along with other texts as The Small Wars Manual in 1940 and, five years before his death at the Naval Hospital in Philadelphia, penned the slightly more notorious War is a Racket.

Here is Butler’s campaign hat on display at the National Marine Corps Museum.