“CinemaScope was utilized to get the stage play of Mr. Roberts outdoors and onto the high seas. Film lore has it that John Ford and Henry Fonda had a fist-fight over the conception of Mr. Roberts: Fonda had played the role on Broadway (for seven years) and Ford was an autocratic Navy man. Ford started the shooting and Mervyn LeRoy finished it. This incident gives style-detectives the job of assigning ‘what scenes to whom.'” Jerry Hiler
“Ford's ideas of injecting broad physical comedy into the film clashed with Fonda's more dramatic interpretation.... Jack Lemmon won his first Oscar as the buffoonish Ensign Pulver, James Cagney energetically lampooned the role of the thin-skinned captain, and Fonda's devotion to duty in the midst of the shipboard shenanigans is quietly impressive.” Joseph McBride