Tokyo Joe (1949 film)

For the Japanese-American mobster and FBI informant, see Ken Eto.
Tokyo Joe

1949 film poster
Directed by Stuart Heisler
Produced by Robert Lord
Written by Steve Fisher
Walter Doniger
Screenplay by Cyril Hume (screenplay)
Bertram Millhauser (screenplay)
Starring Humphrey Bogart
Florence Marly
Sessue Hayakawa
Music by George Antheil
Cinematography Charles Lawton Jr.
Edited by Viola Lawrence
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release dates
  • October 26, 1949
Running time
 88 min.
Country United States
Language English

Tokyo Joe is a 1949 film directed by Stuart Heisler from a story by Steve Fisher, adapted by Walter Doniger and starring Humphrey Bogart, Florence Marly and Sessue Hayakawa. This was Heisler's first of two features starring Bogart, the other was Chain Lightning that also wrapped in 1949 but was held up in release until 1950.

Plot

After World War II, ex-serviceman Joe Barrett (Humphrey Bogart) returns to Tokyo to see if there is anything left of his pre-war bar and gambling joint ("Tokyo Joe's") after all the bombing. Amazingly, it is more or less intact and being run by his old friend Ito (Teru Shimada). Joe is shocked to learn from Ito that his wife Trina (Florence Marly), who he thought had died in the war, is still alive. Believing her to be dead, Joe inadvertently deserts her and she has divorced Joe and is now married to Mark Landis (Alexander Knox), a lawyer working in the U.S. Occupation HQ. She has a seven-year-old child, Joe's daughter Anya (Lora Lee Michel), born when Trina was in an internment camp after Joe's departure from Japan just before Pearl Harbor.

Joe starts up an air freight business, fronting for Baron Kimura (Sessue Hayakawa), former head of the Japanese secret police. Joe believes Kimura is using the airline to smuggle penicillin and other drugs into the country, but discovers he is actually intending to smuggle in former senior officers of the Imperial Japanese Army and the leader of the Black Dragon Society in order to organize a Communist coup against the new democratic government. When he balks, Kimura kidnaps Anya to force him to comply. Joe rescues Anya and foils the Baron's plot, but is fatally wounded in the ensuing struggle.

Cast

As appearing in screen credits (main roles identified):

Actor Role
Humphrey Bogart Joseph "Joe" Barrett
Alexander Knox Mark Landis
Florence Marly Trina Pechinkov Landis
Sessue Hayakawa Baron Kimura
Jerome Courtland Danny
Gordon Jones Idaho
Teru Shimada Ito
Hideo Mori Kanda
Charles Meredith General Ireton
Rhys Williams Colonel Dahlgren
Lora Lee Michel Anya, Trina's daughter
Hugh Beaumont Provost Marshal Major

A full cast and production crew list is too lengthy to include, see: IMDb profile. [1]

Production

The film was Sessue Hayakawa's first postwar project and served as a revitalization of his career. From 1937 to 1949, Hayakawa had been in France, first as an actor and then was caught up in the German occupation, living ostensibly as an artist, selling watercolors. After joining the French underground, he aided Allied flyers during the war. When Humphrey Bogart's production company tracked him down to offer him a role in Tokyo Joe, before issuing a work permit, the American Consulate investigated Hayakawa's activities during the war, and cleared his way to work on the film.[2]

Principal filming for Tokyo Joe took place from January 4 to the end of February 1949 on the Columbia Pictures studio lot, not on location in Tokyo, Japan. A second photographic unit was dispatched by Columbia to Tokyo to collect exterior scene shots and was the first movie company allowed to film in postwar Japan. The use of a Lockheed Hudson bomber converted into cargo hauling is featured with both interiors, and aerial sequences revolving around the aircraft.

Reception

The film fared well with the public as the subject of postwar Japan was an intriguing one featured in many of the headlines of the day. Most viewers were convinced that the film was a semi-documentary due to the extensive use of footage shot in Japan. The critics were less charitable, The New York Times contemporary review noted the juxtaposition of the footage as jarring: "... a note of reality which is embarrassingly at odds with the major and markedly synthetic elements of the plot", further stating: "The big weakness of 'Tokyo Joe,' however, is a script which does not neatly come together, but squanders its good points amidst a field of corn." [3]

Tokyo Joe was released in VHS format for home viewing on August 17, 1989, by Columbia Tristar with a further DVD release in 2004.[4]

References

Notes

  1. ↑ " 'Tokyo Joe' (1949) Full credits." IMDb.com. Retrieved: December 31, 2009.
  2. ↑ "The Legend: Sessue Hayakawa is the first Asian American superstar." goldsea.com, 2009. Retrieved: January 1, 2009.
  3. ↑ "Movie Review: 'Tokyo Joe' (1949) At the Capitol." The New York Times, October 27, 1949. Retrieved: January 1, 2010.
  4. ↑ "Misc Notes for 'Tokyo Joe' (1949). tcm.com. Retrieved: January 1, 2010.

Bibliography

  • Hardwick, Jack and Ed Schnepf. "A Buff's Guide to Aviation Movies". Air Progress Aviation Vol. 7, No. 1, Spring 1983.
  • Michael, Paul. Humphrey Bogart: The Man and his Films. New York: Bonanza Books, 1965.

External links