''Tokyo Joe'' is a 1949 American film noir crime film directed by Stuart Heisler and starring Humphrey Bogart. 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 spending

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

in the Air Force, ex-Colonel Joe Barrett returns to

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

to see if there is anything left of his pre-war bar and gambling joint, Tokyo Joe's. Amazingly, it is more or less intact and being run by his old friend Ito. Joe is shocked to learn from Ito that his wife Trina, whom he thought had died in the war, is still alive. She has divorced Joe and is married to Mark Landis, a lawyer working in the

American occupation of Japan Japan was occupied and administered by the victorious Allies of World War II from the 1945 surrender of the Empire of Japan at the end of the war until the Treaty of San Francisco took effect in 1952. The occupation, led by the United States w ...

. She has a seven-year-old child named Anya. To stay in Japan after his visitor's permit expires in 60 days, Joe wants to set up an airline freight franchise, but he needs financial backing. Through Ito, Joe meets Baron Kimura, former head of the Japanese secret police. Kimura offers to finance a small airline business that will carry frozen frogs for export to North and South America, even though Joe believes Kimura is going to use the airline as a front, carrying penicillin, saccharine, and pearls. But as the army hesitates in giving Joe permission to open the business, Kimura shows him proof from the Japanese secret police files that Trina worked broadcasting propaganda for the Japanese, a treasonable offense since she was a naturalized American citizen married to an American citizen. When Joe confronts Trina with this evidence, she explains that she made the broadcasts only to protect her newborn baby whom the Japanese took away from her when she was in Oyama prison camp. She reveals that she was pregnant when Joe deserted her, and that Anya is his daughter. Joe wants to back out of the airline deal, but Kimura demands that he go through with it. To save Trina, Joe accepts Kimura's proposal and convinces Mark Landis to help him start the airline business before his visitor's permit expires. Joe then discovers through American occupation authorities that Kimura actually intends to smuggle in fugitive war criminals-former senior officers of the

Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...

and the leader of the

Black Dragon Society The , or the Amur River Society, was a prominent paramilitary, ultranationalist group in Japan. History The ''Kokuryūkai'' was founded in 1901 by martial artist Uchida Ryohei as a successor to his mentor Mitsuru Tōyama's '' Gen'yōsha''. I ...

-to start a secret anti-American movement. The authorities plan to apprehend them when they land at Haneda Airfield. But Kimura finds out that Joe had met with the Americans, and before Joe flies to Korea, Kimura informs him that Anya has been kidnapped and will be freed only when the Japanese are delivered at a certain deadline. Joe picks up his passengers and is about to land them at the Army-designated airfield when the Japanese hijack the plane with guns and land at a different airstrip in Okuma. The US Army intercepts the Japanese before they can be driven away, as they had every airstrip on

Honshu , historically called , is the largest and most populous island of Japan. It is located south of Hokkaidō across the Tsugaru Strait, north of Shikoku across the Inland Sea, and northeast of Kyūshū across the Kanmon Straits. The island se ...

covered. Back at the bar, Joe finds out from mortally wounded Ito that Anya is being held in a basement at the old hotel next door. Joe enters the dark cavern and finds Anya, but he is shot by Kimura as he carries Anya to safety. Arriving American soldiers kill Kimura. Joe, seriously wounded, is carried out on a stretcher.

Cast

From ''The Films of Humphrey Bogart'': * Humphrey Bogart as Joseph 'Joe' Barrett *

Alexander Knox Alexander Knox (16 January 1907 – 25 April 1995) was a Canadian actor on stage, screen, and occasionally television. He was nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe for his performance as Woodrow Wilson in the film '' Wilson'' (1944). ...

as Mark Landis *

Florence Marly Florence Marly (2 June 1919 – 9 November 1978) was a Czech-born French film actress. During World War II, Marly moved to neutral Argentina with her Jewish husband, film director Pierre Chenal, where she appeared in several films. She also acted ...

as Trina Pechinkov Landis *

Sessue Hayakawa , known professionally as , was a Japanese actor and a matinée idol. He was a popular star in Hollywood during the silent film era of the 1910s and early 1920s. Hayakawa was the first actor of Asian descent to achieve stardom as a leading man ...

as Baron Kimura *

Jerome Courtland Jerome Courtland (December 27, 1926 – March 1, 2012) was an American actor, director and producer. He acted in films in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and in television in the 1950s and 1960s. Courtland also appeared on Broadway in the musical '' ...

as Danny * Gordon Jones as Idaho *

Teru Shimada Teru Shimada (島田輝 ''Shimada Teru'', born Akira Shimada (島田明 ''Shimada Akira''); November 17, 1905 – June 19, 1988) was a Japanese-American actor. A '' Nikkeijin'' (first-generation Japanese-American), Shimada emigrated to the Unit ...

as Ito * Hideo Mori as Kanda * Charles Meredith as General Ireton * Rhys Williams as Colonel Dahlgren *

Lora Lee Michel Lora Lee Michel (born Virginia Joy Willeford, September 13, 1940) is an American former child actress. She appeared in several feature films during the Golden Age of Hollywood in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In 1950, she was the focus of a cus ...

as Anya, Trina's daughter Uncredited: * Kyoko Kamo as Nani-San * Gene Gondo as Kamikaze * Harold Goodwin as Major J.F.X. Loomis * James Cardwell as Military Police Captain * Frank Kumagai as Truck Driver *

Tetsu Komai (23 April 1894 – 10 August 1970), also known as Tetsuo Komai, was a Japanese-American actor, known for his minor roles in Hollywood films. Biography Born in Kumamoto, Kyushu, Komai had small parts in over 50 films from the 1920s until the ...

as Lt. Gen. "The Butcher" Takenobu * Otto Han as Hara * Yosan Tsuruta as Goro *

Hugh Beaumont Eugene Hugh Beaumont (February 16, 1909 – May 14, 1982) was an American actor. He was best known for his portrayal of Ward Cleaver on the television series '' Leave It to Beaver'', originally broadcast from 1957 to 1963; and as private detec ...

as Provost Marshal Major

Production

Florence Marly Humphrey Bogart Tokyo Joe

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'', the American Consulate investigated Hayakawa's activities during the war before issuing a work permit. 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 The Lockheed Hudson is a light bomber and coastal reconnaissance aircraft built by the American Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. It was initially put into service by the Royal Air Force shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War and p ...

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 ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' 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.""Movie Review: 'Tokyo Joe' (1949) At the Capitol."
''

'', October 27, 1949. Retrieved: January 1, 2010. ''Tokyo Joe'' was released in VHS format for home viewing on August 17, 1989, by Columbia Tristar with a further DVD release in 2004."Misc Notes for 'Tokyo Joe' (1949).
''tcm.com''. Retrieved: January 1, 2010.

References

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

* * * * {{Stuart Heisler 1949 films American crime drama films American aviation films American black-and-white films Film noir Columbia Pictures films Films directed by Stuart Heisler Films set in Japan Films shot in Tokyo Films scored by George Antheil Films with screenplays by Cyril Hume American neo-noir films Films produced by Robert Lord (screenwriter) 1949 crime drama films Japan in non-Japanese culture 1940s American films