Sands of Iwo Jima **** (1949, John Wayne, John Agar, Adele Mara, Forrest Tucker, Arthur Franz, Richard Jaeckel, Wally Cassel, Richard Webb, Julie Bishop) – Classic Movie Review 3183

Director Allan Dwan’s 1949 war movie Sands of Iwo Jima is a very free dramatisation of the World War Two Battle of Iwo Jima, in which more than 5,000 Americans lost their lives for a small volcanic island. It stars the indomitable John Wayne, as tough-as-nails, hard-drinking, embittered US Marine Sergeant John M Stryker, and he was Oscar nominated in his one and only Academy nod until he finally won for True Grit in 1969. Sands of Iwo Jima helped to put Wayne at the peak of his popularity and he won the Most Popular Male Star at the Photoplay Awards in 1950.

Harry Brown was also Oscar nominated for the original, iconic story in which a ultra-tough sergeant whips green rookie recruits into shape as crack fighters and then they’re all tested in the white-hot heat of battle. Nominated for Best Motion Picture Story it may be, but it is hardly original or faithful and is really just a familiar retread version of an old, old war movie story, with the screenplay by Brown and James Edward Grant. It was also Oscar nominated for Best Sound Recording and Best Film Editing (Richard L Van Enger), but nobody won.

This lavish and belligerent movie is rousingly made by Dwan for Republic Pictures studios with authentic combat footage edited in really well, real service personnel in the cast and a winning performance by Wayne, plus a strong support cast of sympathetic actors. Its pro-war stance and subjective version of history are hard to take now, but the movie still delivers as realistically staged war entertainment. The movie covers its fiction elements by declaring: ‘While this photoplay is based on the Battle for Iwo Jima, most of the incidents and, except where true names are knowingly used, all of the characters are fictitious. Any resemblance between any such events or characters and actual events or persons is coincidental.’

Sands of Iwo Jima also stars John Agar, Adele Mara, Forrest Tucker, Arthur Franz, Richard Jaeckel, Wally Cassel, Richard Webb and Julie Bishop.

It was partly filmed at Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base, Oceanside, California.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3183

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