Tokyo Joe (1949 film)
| Tokyo Joe | |
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1949 film poster
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| Directed by | Stuart Heisler |
| Produced by | Robert Lord |
| Written by | Steve Fisher Walter Doniger |
| Screenplay by |
Cyril Hume (screenplay) Bertram Millhauser (screenplay) |
| Starring |
Humphrey Bogart Alexander Knox Florence Marly Sessue Hayakawa |
| Music by | George Antheil |
| Cinematography | Charles Lawton Jr. |
| Edited by | Viola Lawrence |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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88 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Tokyo Joe is a 1949 American film noir crime film directed by Stuart Heisler from a story by Steve Fisher, adapted by Walter Doniger and starring Humphrey Bogart, Alexander Knox, Florence Marly, and Sessue Hayakawa. 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.
After World War II, ex-serviceman Joe Barrett (Humphrey Bogart) returns to Tokyo to see if there is 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). Joe is shocked to learn from Ito that his wife Trina (Florence Marly), who he thought had died in the war, is still alive. She has divorced Joe and is now married to Mark Landis (Alexander Knox), a lawyer working in the U.S. Occupation HQ. She has a seven-year-old child, Joe's daughter Anya (Lora Lee Michel), born when Trina was in an internment camp after Joe's departure from Japan just before Pearl Harbor.
Joe starts up an air freight business, fronting for Baron Kimura (Sessue Hayakawa), former head of the Japanese secret police. Joe believes Kimura will use the airline to smuggle penicillin and other drugs into the country, but discovers he actually intends to smuggle in fugitive war criminals - former senior officers of the Imperial Japanese Army and the leader of the Black Dragon Society - to start a secret anti-American movement. When he balks, Kimura kidnaps Anya to force him to comply. Joe rescues Anya and foils the baron's plot, but is fatally wounded in the ensuing struggle.
As appearing in screen credits (main roles identified):
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.
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