Not Richard Attenborough's Hemingway biopic, but a 20th Century-Fox film designed to show off both CinemaScope and the studio's talented roster of contract players in a formulaic amalgam of The Young Lions and Three Coins in the Fountain. It's a pleasingly clichéd wartime melodrama, offering showy roles to Robert Wagner and Jeffrey Hunter, both looking far more 1950s than 1940s, though Bradford Dillman scores highest as the thoughtful member of a trio of marines experiencing both romance and conflict. The women, as played by the splendid Dana Wynter, Hope Lange and Sheree North, emerge with credit, and there's a nice acting cameo from period satirist Mort Sahl.

Three Marines take shore leave in San Francisco during World War II. Frankie O'Neill visits his lower-class dysfunctional family; Nico Kantaylis visits his pregnant fiancée; and the upper-class Alan Newcombe visits his high-living playgirl girlfriend. Each must decide whether to make the best of his situation or break out of it. O'Neill drowns his troubles in alcohol, losing the respect of a potential lover; Kantaylis marries his fiancée, but realizes he may not survive the war to see his child; while Newcombe sheds his decadent girlfriend for a pure-hearted Hawaiian nurse. Later, in battle, a heroic act costs one of the Marines his life.