The cast is great, especially William Bendix. I think the movie was made to draw attention to the terrible situation which was going on in China at the time. Thought Bendix is better known as a comic actor in many movies he also can switch to play the serious side. Here there is a soft hearted Bendix and comical Bendix and a serious Bendix as the movie is drawn to a very dark side as the Americans and a load of Chinese students try to out run the Japanese Army.

Ladd always played one role, a tough guy, either the good guy or the bad guy but always the tough guy. From what I have read about his personal life that fit him to a tea. He does not stretch his personality in this movie.

Loretta Young is a little out of her nature. She always seemed more reserved and lady like and does not seem to fit in the darker side of China. But I think it is all this change in what people believed about them, especially Bendix and Young is what really pulled it all together and pulled it off. This is really a great movie. Propaganda? Probably, but it is a great movie.

CHINA 1943

This 1943 Paramount Pictures production stars, Alan Ladd, Loretta Young and William Bendix. This wartime flag-waver is set in China just before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Ladd plays a war profiteer who sells oil and gasoline to whoever pays the most. At the moment it is the Japanese. Ladd is a tough, anything for a dime type, who could care less about the war going around him. His sidekick is William Bendix, in the second film pairing of an eventual five, for the pair. When the Japanese start bombing the town, it is into their truck, and on the road. Bendix brings along a small baby he found during the bombing raid.

Further up the road, they hit a group of Chinese refugees who include missionary schoolteacher type, Loretta Young. The next thing you know, Ladd's truck is full of young women from a school Young was running. They want to stay ahead of the advancing Japanese forces.

Miss Young of course tries to melt Ladd's mercenary heart and get him to drive them to their destination. Ladd is bound and determined to dump Young and her charges at the next stop. This changes when one of the girls is gang raped by a Japanese motorcycle patrol. The little baby Bendix had rescued is also killed by the Japanese. Ladd grabs a handy Thompson machine gun and obliterates said Japanese.

The group soon joins up with members of the Chinese forces that are out to hinder the Japanese advance. The group includes, Victor Sen Yung, Philip Ahn and Richard Loo.

Ladd and company now pull a midnight raid on the pursuing Nipponese. They swipe several hundred sticks of dynamite, pausing only to kill a few dozen of the enemy. Ladd of course just happens to know a thing or two about explosives. They plant the dynamite in a pass through the mountains. The Japanese need to go through the pass in order to continue their attack.

Ladd, in a bid to slow down the Japanese, offers up himself as bait. He flags down the leading Japanese staff car, and has a chat with the General in charge. Bendix and the Chinese need the time to finish setting the explosives.

Ladd earns the Chinese the time needed, but, is killed in the massive explosion that brings down the walls of the pass. The motorized Japanese Regiment in the pass is wiped out as well.

Bendix and Young load up the girls and drive off to safety.

This fairly brisk and entertaining war film was directed by John Farrow. This was the third war film in a row for Farrow. He had just finished, COMMANDOS STRIKE AT DAWN and WAKE ISLAND. Farrow would work with Ladd and Bendix in two other films, TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST and CALCUTTA. The twice Oscar nominated, one time winner, Farrow, scored with a number of film noir, war, adventure and western films. These include, HONDO, FIVE CAME BACK, THE BIG CLOCK, NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES, WHERE DANGER LIVES, HIS KIND OF WOMAN and PLUNDER OF THE SUN.

The cinematographer was Leo Tover. He was also twice nominated for an Academy Award. His film work, includes, DEAD RECKONING, I WALK ALONE, THE SNAKE PIT, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, A BLUEPRINT FOR MURDER and JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH.

The film apparently set a record for the most special effects explosions used during a wartime production. Studios were rationed a certain amount of explosives for each picture. Paramount just used supplies that had been carefully husbanded from other productions. There are plenty of big bangs here.

This was the last film Ladd made before being drafted into the military.

Paramount got caught short in 1943, their big discovery Alan Ladd was about to be drafted for who knew how long. So they had to get as much work out of him as they could before Uncle Sam claimed his services. That's the only reason that Alan Ladd at the threshold of his stardom was rushed into this film.

That promotion line that I quoted in the title was as big a piece of hyperbole as ever came out of a publicity man's mind. China is clearly a B picture that was probably ready to roll with lesser known leads. Alan Ladd, Loretta Young, and William Bendix with a cast of Oriental players who never before or since in film history got as much work as during World War II, were rushed into this typical flagwaver.

Ladd and Bendix are a couple of Americans who sell gasoline to whomever pays and in the Orient before Pearl Harbor, the Japanese yen was the strongest currency going. The Sino-Japanese war forces a sudden change in location of operations for them. Fleeing the city they were in, they come across Loretta Young, missionary teacher with a group of young girls in her charge.

From this point on anyone who's watched any World War II era war pictures can figure the rest of the story from here. Loretta is as luminescent as ever, but she and Ladd have no chemistry at all. Ladd knows what Paramount is doing here and looks bored. Except in his scenes with sidekick Bendix. The two of them were close friends in real life. Bill Bendix was never bad in anything he did.

By the way the movie poster that Paramount put out advertising China has a picture of Alan Ladd, bare-chested, machinegun in hand and sporting muscles that the Governator of Cal-lee-fornia would envy. In Alan Ladd's golden era at Paramount, they had some set of brass ones to put him in this nickelplated clinker.