Wake Island (1942)

Wake Island: Directed by John Farrow. With Brian Donlevy, Macdonald Carey, Robert Preston, William Bendix. December, 1941. With no hope of relief or re-supply, a small band of United States Marines tries to keep the Japanese Navy from capturing their island base.

“The battle for Wake Island concluded just before Christmas of 1941 and news from the place was pretty sketchy. It would not be known until after the war ended exactly what happened on the place.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIn many ways it was worse than whatu0026#39;s shown here. With no help coming at all from the mainland USA or from Pearl Harbor which was licking its own wounds, there was an unconditional surrender declared. The construction workers who were building a base on the island when war broke out were all summarily executed as spies. The few Marines who did survive, survived in horrible captivity, probably made worse by the fact that America never tried to take the island back. When they had the overwhelming naval superiority, the Japanese were starved out, but so were the prisoners they had.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSo with an incomplete story at best, the writers at Paramount had free reign to do an Alamo like story and proceeded to do just that. Brian Donlevy is a stalwart Marine Colonel who clashes repeatedly with Albert Dekker the head of the construction workers. Comic relief is provided by Robert Preston and William Bendix as a pair of tough marines who joke about Bendixu0026#39;s impending discharge which occurs right on the day of Pearl Harbor.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBendix was nominated for Best Supporting Actor and while heu0026#39;s pretty funny in the part, when you consider he did a highly effective dramatic role in The Glass Key that same year, Iu0026#39;m wondering if the Academy put him up for the wrong film. He lost that year to Van Heflin for Johnny Eager.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eWake Island is a dated story, dated but entertaining. Maybe someone will do a film of the real story there, the horrible captivity of our prisoners, just like what they endured in the Phillipines.”