The Purple Heart

The Purple Heart
Directed by	Lewis Milestone
Produced by	Darryl F. Zanuck
Written by	Jerome Cady Darryl F. Zanuck story (as Melville Crossman)
Starring	Dana Andrews Richard Conte Farley Granger Kevin O'Shea Don 'Red' Barry Trudy Marshall
Music by	Alfred Newman
Cinematography	Arthur C. Miller
Editing by	Douglass Biggs
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	February 1944
Running time	99 min
Country	United States
Language	English

For other meanings see Purple Heart (disambiguation).

The Purple Heart is a 1944 American war film directed by Lewis Milestone.

It is a dramatization of the trial of a number of US airmen by the Japanese during the Second World War. It is loosely based on the trial of eight airmen who took part in the April 18, 1942, Doolittle Raid {Three were executed and one died as a POW}.

It starred Dana Andrews as the leader of the downed crew, and was directed by Lewis Milestone. Eighteen-year-old Farley Granger had a supporting role.

Plot summary

In April 1942 the crew of a downed American B-25 Mitchell bomber are captured in a Wang Jingwei controlled section of China by a Chinese collaborator who transferred them to the Imperial Japanese Army. The story relates the torture and hardship the men endured while in captivity, and their final humiliation: being tried, convicted and executed as war criminals. Throughout, the American stalwarts are subjected to mistreatment and systematic abuse by the sadistic General Mitsubi (Richard Loo) who ultimately chooses to shoot himself, in the face of his captives' unshakable resolve and the realization that the Japanese are doomed to destruction.

Cast

• Dana Andrews as Capt. Harvey Ross
• Richard Conte as Lt. Angelo Canelli
• Farley Granger as Sgt. Howard Clinton
• Kevin O'Shea as Sgt. Skvoznik
• Don 'Red' Barry as Lt. Peter Vincent (as Donald Barry)
• Trudy Marshall as Mrs. Ross
• Sam Levene as Lt. Wayne Greenbaum
• Charles Russell as Lt. Kenneth Bayforth
• John Craven as Sgt. Martin Stoner
• Tala Birell as Johanna Hartwig
• Richard Loo as Gen Mitsubi
• Peter Chong as Mitsuru Toyama
• Gregory Gaye as Peter Voroshevski - Russian News Correspondent
• Torben Meyer as Karl Kappel - Swiss Consul
• Kurt Katch as Ludwig Kruger - German News Correspondent

Notes

The film was a work of wartime propaganda that had a stereotypical portrayal of the Japanese (usually by actors of non-Japanese origin) as sadistic tyrants. It concluded with a speech where one airman declares that he now knew that he had understood the Japanese less than he had thought, and that they did not know Americans if they thought this would frighten them.

At the time of its release, the war in the Pacific was still raging and there was little concern for such excesses. The December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was still fresh in the minds of the American public. In later years, many of the principal players, including Dana Andrews, came to express regret over the more distasteful aspects of the film although they also pointed out that the Japanese were guilty of waging aggressive war and large scale atrocities based at least partially on their own racism and perceived superiority over people of other nationalities. By that same time, the two engine North American B-25 Mitchell Medium Bomber, used in the Doolittle raid, was being used for lighter missions against the Japanese. Now the four engine Boeing B-29 Superfortress was sent on the attack: it carried heavy bomb loads and light incendiary bombs,and lead mass assaults on numerous locals in Japan. Close to 75% of the country was laid to waste in destructive bomb and fire raids, some going around the clock. It was the prelude to the A bomb attack on Hiroshima.

The movie opened to good reviews and in later years was liked for telling the truth about Japan's treatment of Western prisoners, whatever their station (civilian or military). Years after the trial, the four survivors of the trial got repatriated back to the U.S. While three became regular civilians, one would return to Japan to be a minister: it was told by Walter Cronkite on the TV show The Twentieth Century.

External links

• The Purple Heart at the Internet Movie Database
• The Purple Heart at the TCM Movie Database
• The Purple Heart at AllRovi