Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo *** (1944, Spencer Tracy, Van Johnson, Robert Walker, Phyllis Thaxter, Tim Murdock, Scott McKay, Don DeFore, Robert Mitchum) – Classic Movie Review 10,333

Director Mervyn LeRoy’s 1944 black-and-white war drama Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo is a careful version of the events surrounding the US bombing of Tokyo in 1942 in The Doolittle Raid, a secret bombing mission to take the war to the Japanese homeland in the wake of Pearl Harbor.

True to his name as Lieutenant Colonel James H Doolittle, Spencer Tracy hasn’t enough to do as the commanding officer. But Van Johnson (as source book author Captain Ted W Lawson) and Robert Walker (as David Thatcher) hold the attention and keep things rattling along as airmen on the raid.

This solidly carpentered MGM production mixes wartime morale-boosting and rousing action, with Oscar-winning Best Special Effects by A Arnold Gillespie, Donald Jahraus and Warren Newcombe (photographic) and Douglas Shearer (sound), and nominated Best Cinematography, Black-and-White by Harold Rosson and Robert Surtees.

Dalton Trumbo writes the screenplay, based on the book by Captain Ted W Lawson and Robert Considine.

Phyllis Thaxter makes her film debut as Ellen Lawson in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944). Her last film role was as Ma Kent in Superman (1978) and she died on 14 August 2012, aged 92, in Orlando, Florida.

Also in the cast are Tim Murdock, Scott McKay, Gordon MacDonald, Don DeFore, Robert Mitchum, John R Reilly, Stephen McNally, Donald Curtis, Louis Jean Heydt, William Phillips, Douglas Cowan, Paul Langton, Leon Ames, Moroni Olsen, Benson Fong, Hsin Kung Chuan, Myrna Dell, Peggy Maley, Hazel Brooks, Elaine Shepard, Kay Williams, Dorothy Ruth Morris, Ann Shoemaker, Alan Napier, Wah Lee, Ching Wah, Jacqueline White, Jack McClendon, John Kellogg, Peter Varney, Steve Brodie, Morris Ankrum, Selena Royle, Harry Hayden, Blake Edwards, Will Walls, Jay Norris, Robert Bice, Bill Williams and Wally Cassell.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,333

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