China Girl | |
---|---|
![]() Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Henry Hathaway |
Written by | Ben Hecht Darryl F. Zanuck |
Produced by | Ben Hecht |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Lee Garmes |
Edited by | James B. Clark |
Music by | Hugo Friedhofer Alfred Newman |
Production company | 20th Century Fox |
Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
Release date | December 9, 1942 |
Running time | 96 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $1.4 million (US rentals) [1] |
China Girl is a 1942 drama film which follows the exploits of an American newsreel photographer in China and Burma against the backdrop of World War II. The film stars Gene Tierney, George Montgomery, Lynn Bari and Victor McLaglen, and was directed by Henry Hathaway. [2] It is also known as A Yank In China, Burma Road and Over The Burma Road.
In Luchow, China, news cameraman Johnny Williams (George Montgomery) is taken into custody by the Japanese military. He is offered $20,000 to take pictures of the Burma Road, a vital link for Allied supply that had been built to support the Chinese war effort. He isn't interested.
Johnny is put back into his cell, together with a Canadian, "Major" Bull Weed (Victor McLaglen), who claims to be serving as a Chinese irregular. His confederate, 'Captain' Fifi (Lynn Bari), smuggles a gun in during a faked tempestuous farewell, and the two men escape.
They rendezvous with Fifi, who says she saw a plane nearby at an abandoned airfield. Johnny, an ex-barnstormer expert at flying biplanes, pilots them all through a hail of Burmese anti-aircraft fire to safety in Mandalay. Upon their arrival, he bumps into his old pal, Captain Shorty Maguire (Myron McCormick), a mercenary pilot with the U.S. staffed "Flying Tigers" defending China against the Japanese.
Johnny is asked to join up, but again declines to take sides. He discovers that instead of grabbing his confiscated press credentials while fleeing Luchow, the document he picked up is something in Japanese. Bull manages to decipher just two words, and Johnny quickly loses interest upon sighting a beautiful woman nearby.
Haoli Young (Gene Tierney) has just returned from New York, where she is in school at Vassar. She tells him that her father, Dr. Young (Philip Ahn), has a home in the city, and that she is selling off the last of her family's valuable possessions to fund a mission school he runs for orphans in Kunming. Johnny ends up walking there, and is introduced to him. Once alone, he presses a kiss on her, which is dispassionately received by the reserved Eurasian woman. Feeling jilted, he goes back to his hotel and picks up Fifi.
When he brings Fifi back to his room, Haoli is there waiting for him. He promptly drops Fifi, only to learn from Haoli that Fifi and Bull are Japanese agents, and, by association, Johnny is suspected of being one too. Johnny realizes that he has been played by the pair, but tricks them into replacing the camera equipment he needs to photograph the Burma Road - this time for a big payday from the Western press. He then tells them to get out of Mandalay or he will turn them in as Japanese agents.
Johnny stays in Mandalay, waiting to be flown over the Burma Road by his pal Shorty by tagging along on one of his solo reconnaissance flights. He meets with Haoli again and over a week of courting falls in love with her. However, just that fast she is gone with her father to Kunming, at the far end of the Burma Road. The shock sends Johnny on a bender.
Bull reports back to his Japanese commander, and is ordered to retrieve the document Johnny accidentally had taken, evidently containing military plans for an upcoming campaign against the Burma Road. When Johnny wakes up in his hotel after his night out drinking Fifi is there to warn him that Bull is coming for him. She has fallen in love with him and wants him to run away with her. She tells him that Kunming will be bombed by the Japanese shortly, which instead only sends Johnny racing there after Haoli.
He flies there with Shorty, arriving immediately after a terrible air raid, which killed her father. Johnny helps save some children that were trapped in the toppled building. During the rescue, Haoli is also killed, sending Johnny mad with grief. He rushes up to the top of a building, mans a machine gun, and downs a harrying Japanese fighter, [3] belatedly beginning his personal war with the Japanese.
Victor Andrew de Bier Everleigh McLaglen was a British boxer-turned-Hollywood actor. He was known as a character actor, particularly in Westerns, and made seven films with John Ford and John Wayne. McLaglen won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1935 for his role in The Informer.
Field Marshal William Joseph Slim, 1st Viscount Slim,, usually known as Bill Slim, was a British military commander and the 13th Governor-General of Australia.
Mandalay is the second-largest city in Myanmar, after Yangon. Located on the east bank of the Irrawaddy River, 631 km north of Yangon, the city has a population of 1,225,553.
Lashio is the largest town in northern Shan State, Myanmar, about 200 kilometres (120 mi) north-east of Mandalay. It is situated on a low mountain spur overlooking the valley of the Yaw River. Loi Leng, the highest mountain of the Shan Hills, is located 45 km (28 mi) to the south-east of Lashio.
The Yongli Emperor, personal name Zhu Youlang, was a royal member to the imperial family of Ming dynasty, and the fourth and last commonly recognised emperor of the Southern Ming, reigning in turbulent times when the former Ming dynasty was overthrown and the Manchu-led Qing dynasty progressively conquered the entire China proper. He led the remnants of the Ming loyalists with the assistance of peasant armies to resist the Qing forces in southwestern China, but he was then forced to exile to Toungoo Burma and eventually captured and executed by Wu Sangui in 1662. His era title "Yongli" means "perpetual calendar".
George Montgomery was an American actor, best known for his work in Western films and television. He was also a painter, director, producer, writer, sculptor, furniture craftsman, and stuntman. He was married to Dinah Shore and was engaged to Hedy Lamarr.
Lynn Bari was a film actress who specialized in playing sultry, statuesque man-killers in roughly 150 films for 20th Century Fox, from the early 1930s through the 1940s.
The Irrawaddy Flotilla Company (IFC) was a passenger and cargo ferry company, which operated services on the Irrawaddy River in Burma, now Myanmar. The IFC was Scottish-owned, and was managed by P Henderson & Company from Glasgow. The IFC operated from 1865 until the late 1940s. At its peak in the late 1920s, the IFC fleet was the largest fleet of river boats in the world, consisting of over 600 vessels carrying some 8-9 million passengers and 1¼ million tons of cargo a year.
"Mandalay" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling, written and published in 1890, and first collected in Barrack-Room Ballads, and Other Verses in 1892. The poem is set in colonial Burma, then part of British India. The protagonist is a Cockney working-class soldier, back in grey restrictive London, recalling the time he felt free and had a Burmese girlfriend, now unattainably far away.
The Burma campaign in the South-East Asian Theatre of World War II was fought primarily by British Commonwealth, Chinese and United States forces against the forces of Imperial Japan, who were assisted to some degree by Thailand, the Burmese National Army and the Indian National Army. The British Commonwealth land forces were drawn primarily from the United Kingdom, British India and Africa.
Hello! Lady Lynn is the second season of the anime series, Lady Lady!!, produced by Toei Animation Co., Ltd. It consists of a total of 36 episodes and was aired from May 12, 1988 to January 26, 1989 on TV Tokyo. Based on the Japanese shōjo manga Lady!!, by Youko Hanabusa.
The Road to Mandalay is a 1926 American silent drama film directed by Tod Browning and starring Lon Chaney, Owen Moore, and Lois Moran. It was written by Elliott Clawson, based on a story idea by Tod Browning and Herman Mankiewicz. The script's original shooting title was Singapore. The film took 28 days to complete at a cost of $209,000. The worldwide box office gross was $724,000. Some stills exist showing Chaney's makeup as Singapore Joe.
Tampico is a 1944 drama/war film directed by Lothar Mendes and starring Edward G. Robinson, Lynn Bari, Victor McLaglen, Marc Lawrence, and Mona Maris. It was released by 20th Century Fox.
Margie is a 1946 American romantic comedy film directed by Henry King and starring Jeanne Crain, about a high school girl in the 1920s who develops a crush on her French teacher. Margie was a box-office hit, ranking in the top 15 highest-grossing films of the year, and established Crain as an important Fox star. Although not a true movie musical, it is sometimes classified with musicals due to the large number of 1920s-era popular songs incorporated as nostalgic background in the film.
China Doll is a 1958 romantic drama film set in the China Burma India Theater of World War II and starring Victor Mature and Li Li-Hua. It represented a return to films for director Frank Borzage who had taken a 10-year hiatus before tackling this poignant, yet "offbeat" film.
Kit Carson is a 1940 Western film directed by George B. Seitz and starring Jon Hall as Kit Carson, Lynn Bari as Delores Murphy, and Dana Andrews as Captain John C. Frémont. This picture was filmed on location at Cayente (Kayenta), Arizona and was one of the early films to use Monument Valley as a backdrop. The supporting cast features Ward Bond as a character named "Ape", future Lone Ranger Clayton Moore without his mask, and Raymond Hatton as Jim Bridger.
While Paris Sleeps is a 1932 American pre-Code drama film directed by Allan Dwan and starring Victor McLaglen, Helen Mack and Rita La Roy.
The Great Hotel Murder is a 1935 American mystery film directed by Eugene Forde and starring Edmund Lowe, Victor McLaglen, Rosemary Ames and Mary Carlisle. It is based on Recipe for Murder a 1934 story by Vincent Starrett.
Women of All Nations is a 1931 American pre-Code military comedy film directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Victor McLaglen, Edmund Lowe, Greta Nissen and El Brendel. It was the second of three sequels to Walsh's 1926 film, What Price Glory?, with McLaglen and Lowe reprising their roles.
Battle of Broadway is a 1938 American comedy film directed by George Marshall and written by Lou Breslow and John Patrick. The film stars Victor McLaglen, Brian Donlevy, Gypsy Rose Lee, Raymond Walburn, Lynn Bari and Jane Darwell. The film was released on April 22, 1938, by 20th Century Fox.