Tokyo Joe is a 1949 film

1949 in film

The year 1949 in film involved some significant events.-Top grossing films :- Awards :Academy Awards:*Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff, starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello...

 directed by Stuart Heisler

Stuart Heisler

Stuart Heisler was an American film and television director. He worked as a motion picture editor from 1921 to 1936, then dedicated the rest of his career to that of a film director....

 from a story by Steve Fisher, adapted by Walter Doniger and starring Humphrey Bogart

Humphrey Bogart

Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....

, Florence Marly and Sessue Hayakawa

Sessue Hayakawa

was a Japanese and American Issei actor who starred in American, Japanese, French, German, and British films. Hayakawa was the first and one of the few Asian actors to find stardom in the United States as well as Europe. Between the mid-1910s and the late 1920s, he was as well known as actors...

. This was Heisler's first of two features starring Bogart, the other was Chain Lightning

Chain Lightning (film)

Chain Lightning is a 1950 American aviation film based on the story "These Many Years" by black-listed writer Lester Cole ; the screenplay was written by Liam O'Brien and Vincent B. Evans. During World War II, Evans had been the bombardier on the B-17 Flying Fortress Memphis Belle...

that also wrapped in 1949 but was held up in release until 1950.

Plot

After World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, ex-serviceman Joe Barrett (Humphrey Bogart) returns to Tokyo, to see if there's 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

Teru Shimada

Teru Shimada was an acclaimed Japanese-American actor who was cast most famously as Mr. Osato, a SPECTRE agent in the 1967 James Bond film, You Only Live Twice. His film career began in 1932 with the Night Club Lady. He appeared with Peter Lorre in the 1939 classic Mr. Moto's Last Warning...

). He is also shocked to learn from Ito that his wife Trina (Florence Marly), who he thought had died in the war, is in fact still very much alive. She has remarried, to American diplomat Mark Landis (Alexander Knox

Alexander Knox

Alexander Knox was a Canadian actor and author of adventure novels set in the Great Lakes area during the 19th century.-Biography:...

), and has a seven-year-old child, Joe's daughter Anya (Lora Lee Michel).

Barrett starts up an air freight business. One of his customers, underworld boss Baron Kimura (Sessue Hayakawa

Sessue Hayakawa

was a Japanese and American Issei actor who starred in American, Japanese, French, German, and British films. Hayakawa was the first and one of the few Asian actors to find stardom in the United States as well as Europe. Between the mid-1910s and the late 1920s, he was as well known as actors...

), wants him to smuggle war criminals into the country in order to organize an anti-American Communist movement. When he balks, Kimura kidnaps Anya. Barrett rescues her and foils the Baron's plot, although he is fatally wounded in the ensuing struggle.

Cast

As appearing in screen credits (main roles identified):

Actor	Role
Humphrey Bogart Humphrey Bogart Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....	Joseph "Joe" Barrett
Alexander Knox Alexander Knox Alexander Knox was a Canadian actor and author of adventure novels set in the Great Lakes area during the 19th century.-Biography:...	Mark Landis
Florence Marly	Trina Pechinkov Landis
Sessue Hayakawa Sessue Hayakawa was a Japanese and American Issei actor who starred in American, Japanese, French, German, and British films. Hayakawa was the first and one of the few Asian actors to find stardom in the United States as well as Europe. Between the mid-1910s and the late 1920s, he was as well known as actors...	Baron Kimura
Jerome Courtland Jerome Courtland Jerome Courtland is an American actor, director and producer. He acted in films in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and in television in the 1950s and 1960s...	Danny
Gordon Jones	Idaho
Teru Shimada Teru Shimada Teru Shimada was an acclaimed Japanese-American actor who was cast most famously as Mr. Osato, a SPECTRE agent in the 1967 James Bond film, You Only Live Twice. His film career began in 1932 with the Night Club Lady. He appeared with Peter Lorre in the 1939 classic Mr. Moto's Last Warning...	Ito
Hideo Mori	Kanda
Charles Meredith Charles Meredith (actor) Charles Meredith was an American film and television actor. When Meredith died, The Incredible Mr. Limpet was said to be his last film.-Selected filmography:...	General Ireton
Rhys Williams Rhys Williams (actor) Rhys Williams was a Welsh character actor in movies and television, whose career spanned several decades.He made his film debut in How Green Was My Valley . This movie takes place in rural Wales with a large cast of Welsh characters, but was actually filmed in Hollywood with Canadian, American,...	Colonel Dahlgren
Lora Lee Michel	Anya, Trina's daughter

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

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.

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

Lockheed Hudson

The Lockheed Hudson was an American-built light bomber and coastal reconnaissance aircraft built initially for the Royal Air Force shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War and primarily operated by the RAF thereafter...

 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 post-war 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 contemporary New York Times 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."

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