# No Time for Sergeants

No Time for Sergeants is a 1954 best-selling novel by Mac Hyman, which was adapted into a teleplay on The United States Steel Hour, a popular Broadway play and 1958 motion picture, as well as a 1964 television series. The book chronicles the misadventures of a country bumpkin named Will Stockdale who is drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II and assigned to the U.S. Army Air Forces. Hyman was in the Army Air Forces during World War II.

## Adaptations in other media

Ira Levin adapted Hyman's novel for a one-hour teleplay that appeared as an episode on The United States Steel Hour television series in 1955. An expanded version appeared on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre later that year. In 1958, a film version was released.

### Television adaptation (1955)

Ira Levin's adaptation of the novel appeared live on March 15, 1955, on the anthology series The United States Steel Hour. It starred Andy Griffith as Will Stockdale, Harry Clark as his nemesis and inadvertent mentor Sergeant Orville King, as well as Robert Emhardt, Eddie Le Roy and Alexander Clark. A kinescope recording of the broadcast is available.

### Broadway play

An expanded version of the play, written by Ira Levin, opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre on October 20, 1955, produced by Maurice Evans and directed by Morton DaCosta. Griffith reprised his role, Myron McCormick played Sgt. King, Roddy McDowall played Will's army buddy Ben, and Don Knotts made his Broadway debut as Corporal Manual Dexterity. Scenic designer Peter Larkin won a Tony Award in 1956, and Andy Griffith was nominated for a Tony for Best Featured Actor. The play ran for a total of 796 performances, closing on September 14, 1957.

### Motion picture

    See No Time for Sergeants (1958 film)
No Time for Sergeants was filmed and released by Warner Bros. in 1958. The film was directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starred Griffith, McCormick, Knotts, and most of the rest of the original Broadway cast. Warner Bros. contract stars Nick Adams (as Stockdale's fellow draftee Benjamin B. Whitledge) and Murray Hamilton (as Irving S. Blanchard) joined the cast.

### Television series

No Time for Sergeants came to the small screen in Fall 1964. By this point, Griffith and Knotts were both established as stars of The Andy Griffith Show and were no longer available. The television series No Time for Sergeants starred Sammy Jackson who had had one line in the film version. When Jackson read that Warner Bros. was going to produce a television sitcom version of No Time for Sergeants, he wrote directly to Jack L. Warner, stating that he was the best choice for the role and asked Warner to watch a certain episode of the series Maverick as proof. Ten days later, Jackson was told to come to the studio to test for the role. Jackson won the role over several actors, including the better known Will Hutchins, a Warner Bros. Television contract star who formerly played the sympathetic Sugarfoot and had been in the No Time for Sergeants film.
Unlike Jim Nabors's Gomer Pyle (of The Andy Griffith Show spin-off of the same name, inspired by No Time for Sergeants), Jackson's Stockdale was not unintelligent. He possessed a considerable amount of common sense gained from experience, which he frequently brought to bear during the run of the series.
* His knowledge of farming leads him to give a better image interpretation analysis of an aerial photograph than Air Force Intelligence.
* The Air Force attempts to demonstrate the efficiency of its survival training by pitting an Air Force survival trained group against an untrained group including Stockdale in the wilderness. Stockdale, with his backwoods knowledge, takes charge and gives his party a comfortable time similar to being in a resort, while the trained group barely survives.
* Stockdale accepts latrine details as challenges rather than punishments and impresses the drill sergeant by how well he cleans the latrine.
* Stockdale demonstrates another more appealing quality over Gomer Pyle when he unflinchingly takes punches to his stomach from a karate expert with a smile and a good-natured lecture to his assailant until Stockdale ends his lecture by knocking the karate expert through a window.
* Stockdale has no reservations about drinking alcohol. However, the drill sergeant's attempts at getting him drunk fail, with the implication that Stockdale has built up a tolerance for alcohol from a lifetime of drinking moonshine whiskey.
Part of the William T. Orr-produced stable of Warner Bros. Television programs, the series was produced by George Burns's production company. It preceded Burns' own Wendy and Me sitcom (which starred Burns and Connie Stevens) on ABC's Monday night schedule. However, opposite The Andy Griffith Show, the series headlined by the original star of all the earlier versions of No Time For Sergeants, it was trounced in the ratings and only lasted one season. It was shown in the UK on ITV from 1965 to 1969.
Andy Clyde, formerly of The Real McCoys, had a supporting role in the television series as Grandpa Jim Anderson. Ann McCrea, while appearing as a regular on The Donna Reed Show, was cast as Amelia Taggert in the 1964 episode "O Krupnick, My Krupnick".

#### Episode list

| Nº | Title | Directed by | Written by | Air date |
| 1 | "The Permanent Recruit" | Richard Crenna | William Burns, John L. Greene, Elon Packard and Norman Paul | September 14, 1964 (1964-09-14) |
| 2 | "Blue's Wild Yonder" | Leslie H. Martinson | Unknown | September 21, 1964 (1964-09-21) |
| 3 | "Bloodhounds Are Thicker Than Water" | Leslie H. Martinson | Unknown | September 28, 1964 (1964-09-28) |
| 4 | "Grandpa's Airlift" | Leslie H. Martinson | Unknown | October 5, 1964 (1964-10-05) |
| 5 | "Two Aces in the Hole" | Jeffrey Hayden | Unknown | October 12, 1964 (1964-10-12) |
| 6 | "The Spirit of 75" | Sidney Lanfield | Seaman Jacobs & Ed James | October 19, 1964 (1964-10-19) |
| 7 | "Bully for Ben" | Leslie H. Martinson | Unknown | October 26, 1964 (1964-10-26) |
| 8 | "Will Gets a Right-Hand Man" | Leslie H. Martinson | Unknown | November 2, 1964 (1964-11-02) |
| 9 | "Have No Uniform Will Travel" | Leslie H. Martinson | Unknown | November 9, 1964 (1964-11-09) |
| 10 | "The Farmer in the Deal" | Jeffrey Hayden | Seaman Jacobs & Ed James | November 16, 1964 (1964-11-16) |
| 11 | "Will Goes to Washington" | Hollingsworth Morse | Seaman Jacobs & Ed James | November 23, 1964 (1964-11-23) |
| 12 | "The $100,000 Canteen" | Hollingsworth Morse | Unknown | November 30, 1964 (1964-11-30) |
| 13 | "O Krupnick, My Krupnick" | Charles R. Rondeau | Unknown | December 7, 1964 (1964-12-07) |
| 14 | "Do Me a Favor and Don't Do Me Any" | Sidney Lanfield | Seaman Jacobs & Ed James | December 14, 1964 (1964-12-14) |
| 15 | "Stockdale's Island" | Charles R. Rondeau | Unknown | December 21, 1964 (1964-12-21) |
| 16 | "Stockdale's Millions" | Charles R. Rondeau | Unknown | December 28, 1964 (1964-12-28) |
| 17 | "Two for the Show" | Charles R. Rondeau | Unknown | January 4, 1965 (1965-01-04) |
| 18 | "The Living End" | Charles R. Rondeau | Unknown | January 11, 1965 (1965-01-11) |
| 19 | "My Fair Andy" | Charles R. Rondeau | Unknown | January 18, 1965 (1965-01-18) |
| 20 | "Stockdale, General Nuisance" | Leslie H. Martinson | Unknown | January 25, 1965 (1965-01-25) |
| 21 | "Too Many Stockdales" | Unknown | Unknown | February 1, 1965 (1965-02-01) |
| 22 | "A Hatful of Muscles" | Unknown | Unknown | February 8, 1965 (1965-02-08) |
| 23 | "Where There's a Way, There's a Will Stockdale" | Unknown | Unknown | February 15, 1965 (1965-02-15) |
| 24 | "It Shouldn't Happen to a Sergeant" | Unknown | Unknown | February 22, 1965 (1965-02-22) |
| 25 | "How Now, Brown Cow" | Unknown | Unknown | March 1, 1965 (1965-03-01) |
| 26 | "The Case of the Revolving Witness" | Unknown | Unknown | March 8, 1965 (1965-03-08) |
| 27 | "The Sergeant's Kimono" | Unknown | Unknown | March 15, 1965 (1965-03-15) |
| 28 | "Stockdale of the Stockade" | Unknown | Unknown | March 22, 1965 (1965-03-22) |
| 29 | "Will's Misfortune Cookie" | Unknown | Unknown | March 29, 1965 (1965-03-29) |
| 30 | "The Day Blue Blew" | Unknown | Unknown | April 5, 1965 (1965-04-05) |
| 31 | "Whortleberry Roots for Everyone" | Unknown | Unknown | April 12, 1965 (1965-04-12) |
| 32 | "Andy Meets His Match" | Unknown | Unknown | April 19, 1965 (1965-04-19) |
| 33 | "Target: Stockdale" | Unknown | Unknown | April 26, 1965 (1965-04-26) |
| 34 | "The Velvet Wiggle" | Unknown | Unknown | May 3, 1965 (1965-05-03) |

## Comics

A Dell Four Color Issue 914 comic book version of this story, illustrated by Alex Toth and published in July 1958, follows the movie's narrative. Three follow up issues in the 1960s tied into the short-lived TV series that starred Sammy Jackson. Greg Theakston's Pure Imagination released The Alex Toth Reader, v2 in 2005. The art has been reproduced from the originals by a process that has been come to be known as Theakstonization, a process by which the original comics have the color leached out, leaving only the black and white line art, which then is reproduced to appear exactly as it did at the time of original publication. One of the stories offered is the original movie adaptation.