Best movies like The Girl He Left Behind

A couple of teenagers and their kiss-and-run battle!

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Girl He Left Behind Starring Tab Hunter, Natalie Wood, Jessie Royce Landis, Jim Backus, and more. If you liked The Girl He Left Behind then you may also like: The Way Ahead, No Time for Sergeants, An Officer and a Gentleman, Operation Bikini, Renaissance Man and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

A young man is drafted and goes through the rigors of basic training, ultimately discovering the experience is also character-building. Director David Butler's 1956 film stars '50s teen favorites Tab Hunter and Natalie Wood, with supporting roles played by Jim Backus, Jessie Royce Landis, Murray Hamilton, Henry Jones, James Garner, Alan King, Ernestine Wade, David Janssen and Raymond Bailey.

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The Way Ahead

A mismatched collection of conscripted civilians find training tough under Lieutenant Jim Perry and Sergeant Ned Fletcher when they are called up to replace an infantry battalion that had suffered casualties at Dunkirk.

No Time for Sergeants

Georgia farm boy Will Stockdale is about to bust with pride. He’s been drafted. Will’s ready. But is Uncle Sam ready for Will? In No Time for Sergeants, Andy Griffith is certifiably funny in the role that clinched his stardom. Wearing a friendly, wide grin, he ambles into the U.S. Air Force – and lots of folks’ll never be the same.

An Officer and a Gentleman

Zack Mayo is an aloof, taciturn man who aspires to be a navy pilot. Once he arrives at training camp for his 13-week officer's course, Mayo runs afoul of abrasive, no-nonsense drill Sergeant Emil Foley. Mayo is an excellent cadet, but a little cold around the heart, so Foley rides him mercilessly, sensing that the young man would be prime officer material if he weren't so self-involved. Zack's affair with a working girl is likewise compromised by his unwillingness to give of himself.

Operation Bikini

The film takes place aboard an American submarine in the Pacific during World War II. The sub's commander is ordered to stop and pick up an underwater demolition team led by Lt. Hayes, whose mission is to locate and destroy a US submarine sunken in a lagoon off Bikini Atoll before the Japanese are able to raise it and capture the advanced radar system on board.

Renaissance Man

An advertising man is slowly sliding downhill. When he is fired from his job in Detroit, he signs up for unemployment. One day they find him a job: teaching thinking skills to Army recruits. He arrives on base to find that there is no structure set up for the class.

Battle Cry

The dramatic story of US marines in training, in combat and in love during World War II. The story centres on a major who guides the raw recruits from their training to combat. Based on the novel by Leon Uris.

Biloxi Blues

Eugene, an aspiring writer from Brooklyn, is drafted into the US Army during the final months of World War II. For his basic training, the Army sends him to Camp Shelby in Mississippi, where toil, bad food, and antisemitic jibes await. Eugene takes refuge in his sense of humor and in his diary, but they won't protect him in a battle of wills with an unstable drill sergeant.

Buck Privates

Petty con artists Slicker Smith and Herbie Brown mistakenly join the Army evading the cops. The cop chasing them winds up as their drill instructor. A rich young man and his former working class chauffeur are not only in the same unit, they're vying for a pretty girl who seems attracted to both.

Caught in the Draft

Don Bolton is a movie star who can't stand loud noises. To evade the draft, he decides to get married...but falls for a colonel's daughter. By mistake, he and his two cronies enlist. In basic training, Don hopes to make a good impression on the fair Antoinette and her father, but his military career is largely slapstick. Will he ever get his corporal's stripes?

Jarhead

Jarhead is a film about a US Marine Anthony Swofford’s experience in the Gulf War. After putting up with an arduous boot camp, Swofford and his unit are sent to the Persian Gulf where they are eager to fight, but are forced to stay back from the action. Swofford struggles with the possibility of his girlfriend cheating on him, and as his mental state deteriorates, his desire to kill increases.

Ender's Game

Based on the classic novel by Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game is the story of the Earth's most gifted children training to defend their homeplanet in the space wars of the future.

G.I. Jane

In response to political pressure from Senator Lillian DeHaven, the U.S. Navy begins a program that would allow for the eventual integration of women into its services. The program begins with a single trial candidate, Lieutenant Jordan O'Neil, who is chosen specifically for her femininity. O'Neil enters the grueling training program under the command of Master Chief John James Urgayle, who unfairly pushes O'Neil until her determination wins his respect.

The Green Berets

Col. Mike Kirby picks two teams of crack Green Berets for two missions in South Vietnam. The first is to strengthen a camp that is trying to be taken by the enemy. The second is to kidnap a North Vietnamese General.

Sergeant York

Alvin York a hillbilly sharpshooter transforms himself from ruffian to religious pacifist. He is then called to serve his country and despite deep religious and moral objections to fighting becomes one of the most celebrated American heroes of WWI.

The Burning Hills

When Trace Jordan's brother is murdered by members of the land-grabbing Sutton family, he vows to report this injustice to the nearest Army fort.

Darby's Rangers

Stationed in Scotland, Maj. William Darby and the men under his command are trained by British commandos, becoming the U.S. Army's 1st Ranger Battalion. Their drilling period is rigorous, but the men find time to romance local women before being deployed to fight the Nazis. U.S. forces battle from French North Africa to Italy, but when a surprise attack decimates the 1st and 3rd Battalions at the Battle of Cisterna, Darby and the 4th Battalion must come to their aid.

Stripes

John Winger, an indolent sad sack in his 30s, impulsively joins the U.S. Army after losing his job, his girlfriend and his apartment.

Private Benjamin

A sheltered young high society woman joins the army on a whim and finds herself in a more difficult situation than she ever expected.

Dog Tags

Raised in a single parent family by his mother Nate Merritt, develops a friendship with a gay man whilst on leave from the US marines.

Men of the Sky

A propaganda film, made in the early months of World War II, dramatizing a new group of U.S. Army Air Force pilots receiving their wings from Lt. General H.H. Arnold. An off-screen narrator introduces four of them to us; we see them before the war, during flight training, and in their first assignments as pilots.

My Foolish Heart

After a long absence, Mary Jane visits her schoolfriend Eloise, and Eloise's daughter Ramona. Eloise drinks too much and is unhappily married to Lew Wengler. Eloise falls asleep and remembers her time with her true love, Walt Dreiser, at the beginning of the Second World War. She recalls the events that lead up to her split with Mary Jane, and how Lew married Eloise rather than Mary Jane.

Private's Progress

Stanley Windrush has to interrupt his university education when he is called up towards the end of the war. He quickly proves himself not to be officer material, but befriends wily Private Percival Cox who knows exactly how all the scams work in the confused world of the British Army. And Stanley's brigadier War Office uncle seems to be up to something more than a bit shady too - and they are both soon working for him, behind the enemy lines.

See Here, Private Hargrove

Journalist Marion Hargrove enters the Army intending to supplement his income by writing about his training experiences. He muddles through basic training at Fort Bragg with the self-serving help of a couple of buddies intent on cutting themselves in on that extra income.

Tab Hunter Confidential

In the 1950s, Tab Hunter is number one at the box office and number one on the music charts. He is Hollywood’s most sought-after star and America’s boy next door. Natalie Wood, Debbie Reynolds and Sophia Loren are just a few of the actresses he is romantically linked to. Nothing, it seems, can damage Tab Hunter’s career. Nothing, that is, except for the fact that Tab Hunter is secretly gay. Now, Tab Hunter’s secret is out. We will meet, for the first time, the real Tab Hunter as he shares with us the whole story of a happy, healthy survivor of Hollywood’s roller coaster.

This Is the Army

In WW I dancer Jerry Jones stages an all-soldier show on Broadway, called Yip Yip Yaphank. Wounded in the War, he becomes a producer. In WW II his son Johnny Jones, who was before his fathers assistant, gets the order to stage a knew all-soldier show, called THIS IS THE ARMY. But in his pesonal life he has problems, because he refuses to marry his fiancée until the war is over.

Toy Soldiers

While on a vacation in Central America, some American teenagers are kidnapped by terrorists. A rescue mission is sent after them, but they manage to escape and join up with a mercenary fighting the terrorists.

Tribes

A Marine Corps drill instructor who is disgusted by the fact that the Corps now accepts draftees finds himself pitted against a hippie who has been drafted but refuses to accept the military's way of doing things.

The Human Comedy

Teenager Homer Macauley stays at home in the small town of Ithaca, California to support his family while his older brother Marcus prepares to go to war.

Annapolis Salute

The adventures of three disparate cadets at the US Naval Academy--one the son of a Navy enlisted man, the other the scion of a wealthy family, the third decent but somewhat slow-witted--and their struggles with the rigors of the academy, women, and each other.

I Want You

The scene is a small town in the Eastern United States, where the outbreak of hostilities in Korea has a profound effect on several people. WWII veteran Martin Greer wants to re-enlist, much to the dismay of his wife Nancy.

Military Academy with That Tenth Avenue Gang

Military Academy with That Tenth Avenue Gang is a 1950 American comedy-drama film directed by D. Ross Lederman, and starring Stanley Clements, Danny Welton, and Gene Collins

To the Shores of Tripoli

Chronicle of a spoiled rich boy who joins the Marines with an off-handed attitude and finally becomes a battle-wise soldier. Academy Award Nominations: Best (Color) Cinematography.

The Colt

During the heat of battle in the midst of the Civil War, a beguilingly innocent colt is born to Union Jim Rabb's beloved mare. Refusing the orders to shoot it, lest it prove a hindrance, Rabb keeps the colt as a consolation in these desperate times-a symbol of hope that leads the men of the First Cavalry on a journey of self-discovery and newfound brotherhood.

The Young Visiters

The Young Visiters, written in twelve days by nine-year-old Daisy Ashford in 1890, is a surreal blend of naiveté, precocious perception and inadvertent social satire.

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