A Soldier's Story

A Soldier's Story is a 1984 American mystery drama film directed and produced by Norman Jewison, adapted by Charles Fuller from his Pulitzer Prize-winning A Soldier's Play. It is a murder mystery set in a segregated regiment of the U.S Army commanded by White officers and training in the Jim Crow South. In a time and place where a Black commissioned officer is bitterly resented by nearly everyone, an African-American JAG Captain investigates the murder of an African-American drill sergeant in Louisiana following American entry into World War II. As the investigation proceeds, the events leading up to the Sergeant's murder are shown in flashbacks

The cast is led by Howard Rollins and Adolph Caesar. Other actors include Art Evans, David Alan Grier, Larry Riley, David Harris, Robert Townsend, Bob Swanson, and Patti LaBelle. Denzel Washington, still at the beginning of his career, appears in a supporting role. Several actors reprise their roles from the stage version.

The film premiered at the 1984 Toronto International Film Festival, and was both a critical and commercial success. It received three Academy Award nominations - for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Adolph Caesar. The film was ranked by the National Board of Review as one of the 10 best films of 1984, and won the Golden Prize at the 14th Moscow International Film Festival.

Plot
In 1944 during World War II, a drunken and guilt-ridden Vernon Waters, a master sergeant in a company of Black soldiers, shouts, "No matter what you do, they still hate you!" Moments later, he is shot to death with a .45 caliber pistol outside Fort Neal, a segregated Army base in Louisiana. Captain Richard Davenport, a Black officer from the Judge Advocate General's Corps, is sent to investigate, against the wishes of commanding officer Colonel Nivens. Most assume Waters was killed by the local Ku Klux Klan, but others are doubtful.

Nivens gives Davenport three days to conduct his investigation. Even Captain Taylor, the only white officer who wants the Sergeant's killers prosecuted, is uncooperative and patronizing, fearing a Black officer will have little success. While some Black soldiers are proud to see one of their own wearing captain's bars, others are distrustful and evasive. Davenport soon learns, though, that whenever the Klan murders Black soldiers, they always strip them naked, whereas the body of Sgt. Waters was found still wearing his uniform.

Davenport learns that Waters' company was officially part of the 221st Chemical Smoke Generator Battalion. Though eager to serve their country in combat, they are kept on the Home Front and assigned menial jobs. Most are former players from the Negro baseball league, grouped as a unit to play ball with Waters as manager. Their success against white soldiers gives them a good deal of popularity, with talk of an exhibition game against the New York Yankees.

James Wilkie, a former sergeant Waters busted for being drunk on duty, describes Waters as a combat veteran who was awarded with the Croix de Guerre by the Third French Republic during the First World War. He also describes Waters as a strict disciplinarian, but also a fair, good-natured NCO who got on well with his men, especially baseball pitcher and Jazz musician C.J. Memphis.

Private Peterson reveals Waters' tyrannical nature and his disgust with Black soldiers from the rural South who lacked education or who spoke in Gullah dialect. Peterson also recalls how he stood up to Waters when he berated the men after a winning game. Waters challenged Peterson to a fistfight, threw sand into his eyes, and beat Peterson up very badly. Interviewing other soldiers, Davenport learns that Waters charged C.J. with the murder of a white MP, after a search conducted by Wilkie turned up a recently discharged pistol under C.J.'s bunk. Waters provoked C.J. into striking him and while the murder charge was dismissed, C.J. was charged with striking a superior officer.

Davenport next interrogates C.J.'s best friend Corporal Bernard Cobb as a murder suspect. Cobb recalls visiting him in the brig, where C.J. told Cobb of a visit from Waters, who smugly admitted the planted gun was part of a frame-up he had done many times before. Sgt. Waters viewed "Geechees", as he termed uneducated, subservient, and unintelligent southern Blacks like C.J., as an obstacle to racial equality and the success of the future African American upper class, and who needed to be removed at all costs. Davenport also learns from Cobb that C.J. had always suffered from claustrophobia and hanged himself while awaiting his court-martial. In protest, the baseball team deliberately threw the season's last game, and Waters was left shattered by the suicide. Taylor disbanded the team, and the players were reassigned to the 221st.

Davenport learns that racist white officers Captain Wilcox and Lieutenant Byrd had an altercation with Waters shortly before his death. Both officers admit to physically assaulting a guilt-ridden Waters after he confronted them in a drunken tirade. They admit that they would have killed him, but only men on guard duty are issued .45 ammunition when the unit is on bivouac. Both officers also claim to have turned their side-arms in immediately after learning of Sgt. Waters' murder, and that ballistics testing has already cleared them. Captain Taylor insists Wilcox and Byrd are murderers, but Davenport disagrees and releases them.

Davenport interrogates Wilkie, who admits he planted the gun under C.J.'s bunk on Waters' orders. Waters had also revealed to Wilkie the real reasons for his hatred of Gullah-speaking Southern Blacks like C.J. While serving with the AEF in France during World War I, a Black soldier in Waters' unit had, at the urging of racist White Doughboys, humiliated them all by dressing up and acting like a monkey in front of the French girls at a cabaret called the "Cafe Napoleon". Previously, white French women had been willing to dance with Black Doughboys and go out with them on dates. In retaliation, Waters, who had always viewed the case as proof of how much damage an ignorant Black man could do, and his enraged fellow Black Doughboys had slit the soldier's throat.

Davenport demands to know why Waters did not also frame Peterson after their fight. Wilkie explains that Waters liked and respected Peterson; as he spoke proper English and stood up for himself. Davenport has Wilkie arrested just as an impromptu celebration begins, as the 221st is about to be shipped out to join the fight overseas.

Realizing Peterson and Smalls were on guard duty the night of Waters' murder, and thus had been issued .45 ammunition for their pistols, Davenport interrogates Smalls, who was brought back by the MPs. Smalls confesses to watching as Peterson fatally shot Sgt. Waters, claiming it was "justice", both for C.J. and for all Black people. Captured and brought to the interrogation room, Peterson, who incorrectly viewed Waters as a self-hating Black man, smugly says, "I didn't kill much. Some things need getting rid of”. Captain Davenport, implying that Peterson, despite his differing criteria, is no different from Sgt. Waters, coldly retorts, “Who gave you the right to judge who is fit to be a Negro?”

Taylor congratulates Davenport on the arrests of Wilkie, Peterson, and Smalls, admitting that he will have to get used to Negroes being commissioned officers. Davenport replies, "You will have to get used to it. You can bet your ass on that". Meanwhile, the platoon marches in preparation for their deployment to the European theatre.

Cast

 * Howard E. Rollins Jr. as CPT. Richard Davenport
 * Adolph Caesar as MSG. Vernon Waters
 * Art Evans as PVT. James Wilkie
 * David Alan Grier as CPL. Bernard Cobb
 * David Harris as PVT. Tony Smalls
 * Denzel Washington as PFC. Melvin Peterson
 * Dennis Lipscomb as CPT. Charles Taylor
 * Larry Riley as PVT. C.J. Memphis
 * Robert Townsend as CPL. Ellis
 * William Allen Young as PVT. Henson
 * John Hancock as SGT. Washington
 * Patti LaBelle as Big Mary
 * Trey Wilson as COL. Nivens
 * Wings Hauser as LT. Byrd
 * Scott Paulin as CPT. Wilcox
 * Mike Williams as PFC. Oscar

Sources:

Production
Jewison and many of the cast members worked for scale or less under a tight budget with Columbia Pictures. "No one really wanted to make this movie... a black story, it was based on World War II, and those themes were not popular at the box office", according to Jewison. Warner Bros. turned it down, as did Universal and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Columbia's Frank Price read the screenplay and was deeply interested, but the studio was hesitant about its commercial value, so Jewison offered to do the film for a $5 million budget and no salary. When the Directors Guild of America insisted he must have a fee, he agreed to take the lowest possible amount. The film ended up grossing $22.1 million.

Howard E. Rollins, Jr. had just received an Oscar nomination for his role in Ragtime and was cast as the lead. Most of the cast came from Broadway careers, but only Adolph Caesar, Denzel Washington, Larry Riley and William Allen Young appeared in both the movie and the original off-Broadway play with the Negro Ensemble Company in the New York City version.

In a 1985 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Caesar stated, while crafting the character of Waters, he drew on his frustrating experiences with both racism and ignorance in Classical theatre, "I’d studied Shakespeare to death. I knew more about Shakespeare than Shakespeare knew about himself. After I did one season at a Shakespearean repertory company, a director said to me, ‘You have a marvelous voice. You know the king’s English well. You speak iambic pentameter. My suggestion is that you go to New York and get a good colored role.' Waters has tried his best, but no matter what you do, they still hate you."

A Soldier's Story was shot entirely in Arkansas. The "Tynin" exterior scenes were shot in three days in Clarendon. The baseball sequence was filmed in Little Rock at the historic Lamar Porter Field.

Bill Clinton (then Governor of Arkansas) dropped by during the shooting. He became very enthused about the project and later helped by providing the Arkansas Army National Guard in full regalia for a grand scene, since Jewison could not afford to pay an army of extras. Production was completed with their help at Fort Chaffee United States Army Ready Reserve base at Fort Smith.

Fuller had said Herman Melville's novella Billy Budd inspired the play.

Reception
The film holds a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from a sample of 22 critics. The site's consensus reads, "A meticulously crafted murder mystery with incisive observations about race in America, A Soldier's Story benefits from a roundly excellent ensemble and Charles Fuller's politically urgent screenplay".