China Girl | |
---|---|
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 |
|
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 Luzhou, China, news cameraman Johnny Williams 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 is not interested.
Johnny is put back into his cell, together with a Canadian, "Major" Bull Weed, who claims to be serving as a Chinese irregular. His confederate, 'Captain' Fifi, 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, 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 has just returned from New York, where she is in school at Vassar. She tells him that her father, Dr. Young, 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.
Terry and the Pirates is an action-adventure comic strip created by cartoonist Milton Caniff, which originally ran from October 22, 1934, to February 25, 1973. Captain Joseph Patterson, editor for the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate, had admired Caniff's work on the children's adventure strip Dickie Dare and hired him to create the new adventure strip, providing Caniff with the title and locale. The Dragon Lady leads the evil pirates; conflict with the pirates was diminished in priority when World War II started.
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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.
The Burma Road was a road linking Burma with southwest China. Its terminals were Lashio, Burma, in the south and Kunming, China, the capital of Yunnan province in the north. It was built in 1937–1938 while Burma was a British colony to convey supplies to China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Preventing the flow of supplies on the road helped motivate the occupation of Burma by the Empire of Japan in 1942 during World War II. Use of the road was restored to the Allies in 1945 after the completion of the Ledo Road. Some parts of the old road are still visible today.
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Bhagwandas Bagla was the first Marwari Shekhawati millionaire (crorepati). He was a very wealthy timber merchant and owned several Saw Mills. Bhagwandasji was originally from Churu, Rajasthan but proceeded his business to Burma and eventually settled in Rangoon. He proceeded his business to Burma during King Thibaw’s time. During the Anglo-Burmese War he became a big Military Supplier and Contractor, he built several roads, bridges etc. in Burma. He owned thousands of acres of Paddy lands facing Rangoon Harbour. He was a Banker, Landlord and Merchant, owned considerable properties in Rangoon, Mandalay, Moulmein and several other cities in Burma. He was awarded with the title of "Rai Bahadur" by the British Raj in February 1890.
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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.
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The Beloved Brute is a 1924 American silent Western film directed by J. Stuart Blackton and starring Marguerite De La Motte, Victor McLaglen, and William Russell. It is based on the 1923 novel The Beloved Brute by Kenneth Perkins. This was English-born McLaglen's first American film.
"Darkie's Mob" is a British comic war story published in the weekly anthology Battle Picture Weekly from 14 August 1976 to 18 June 1977 by IPC Magazines. Set during World War II, the story follows a rogue unit led by the uncompromising Joe Darkie, operating in Burma behind Japanese lines. Written by John Wagner and drawn by Mike Western, the strip was told through a bloodstained notebook recovered from the Burmese jungle in 1946.