Wayne like many other actors including Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney would fight against the Nazis and the Japanese but only in films like FLYING TIGERS (1942) or THE FIGHTING SEABEES (1944). These war films were made to drum up public support, highlight the bravery of our young fighting men and women, and sell U.S. War Bonds. One particular location in the Pacific sparked the imagination of Hollywood with its David vs Goliath mentality and the fighting fervor of the local inhabitants. That location was the Philippines and the peninsula known as Bataan. Japan had occupied the Philippines beginning in 1942 sending General Douglas McArthur fleeing to Australia, vowing to return. 76,000 American and Filipino were captured at Bataan and forced to endure the infamous Bataan Death March. But the fighting spirit of the Filipino people, desperately seeking their independence, aided by the United States would eventually turn back the Japanese forces.
As the title BACK TO BATAAN (1945) suggests, this film was a sequel of sorts as Hollywood had first explored the Philippine conflict in BATAAN (1943) two years earlier directed by Tay Garnett and starring Robert Taylor, George Murphy, and Lloyd Nolan. Other films about the Fall of the Philippines and the underground movement to turn back their oppressors included Mark Sandrich's nurse themed SO PROUDLY WE HAIL! (1943) with Claudette Colbert and Veronice Lake and John Ford's first film after completing his Navy service THEY WERE EXPENDABLE (1945) starring Robert Montgomery and John Wayne. Wayne would also star in BACK TO BATAAN where he would not only be fighting the Japanese onscreen but fighting with BACK TO BATAAN'S director Edward Dmytryk offscreen as Wayne discovered Dmytryk was a Communist sympathizer clashing with Wayne's patriotic views.
With a screenplay by Ben Barzman and Richard H. Landau (who were constantly rewriting the script as real events kept changing the storyline like the American invasion of the Philippines) based on an original story by Aeneas MacKenzie and William Gordon and directed by Edward Dmytryk (THE CAINE MUTINY), BACK TO BATAAN begins in January 1945 almost documentary style as U.S. Army Rangers liberate prisoners of war at a Japanese Prison Camp at Cabanatuan. As an honor parade of U.S. servicemen walk freely out of the camp, Dmytryk highlights actual soldiers who were prisoners there. The film than focuses on the two main characters in BACK TO BATAAN. Col. Joseph Madden (John Wayne) trains Filipino scouts to spy on the Japanese on the island fortress of Corregidor. Captain Andres Bonifacio (Anthony Quinn) is the grandson of a famous Filipino hero, working with the Americans. Bonifacio is sullen as his former girlfriend Dalisay Delgado (Fely Franquelli) has become a collaborator with the enemy, broadcasting propaganda over Radio Manila for the Filipino people to stop fighting (or is she?). Madden tells Bonifacio to get over his love sickness as he needs him battle ready.
Madden is ordered by General Jonathan "Skinny" Wainwright (John Miljan) to scrap together a group of Filipinos to fight as a guerilla unit for a new mission to blow up a gasoline dump at a Japanese airfield on the other side of the island. Madden also learns from Wainwright that Ms. Delgado is a double agent, broadcasting valuable information to them. Madden must keep this secret from Bonifacio. Madden forms his guerilla resistance group while Bonifacio takes over leading a battalion. Madden encounters an American school teacher Bertha Barnes (Beulah Bondi) and her students who have been displaced after Japanese soldiers led by a Japanese captain (Abner Biberman) hang the principal of the school Buenaventura Bello (Vladimir Sokoloff) for refusing to take down the American flag. Barnes wants revenge. Madden tells her they're sticking to the original mission.
On the way to destroy the gas depot, Madden and his team including Sergeant Bernessa (Alex Havier) and Bindle Jackson (Paul Fix) discover that Bataan has fallen. They encounter the Bataan Death March with thousands of prisoners forced to walk in humid conditions hundreds of miles by the Japanese military. Among the walking prisoners is Bonifacio. Madden's men manage to whisk Bonifacio away from the Japanese. Madden changes his mind and orders an attack on the Filipino village and school taken over by the Japanese. They kill the Japanese commander who ordered the hanging of the principal. One of Ms. Barnes students Maximo Cuenca (Ducky Louie) manages to steal a radio from the Japanese. For the next year, Madden and his guerillas attack all over the Philippines at Dagupan, Baler, Malolos, and Lingayen, striking at the heart of the Japanese occupiers.
To win back the favor of the Filipino people, General Homma (Leonard Srong) along with his commanders Major Hasko (Richard Loo) and Colonel Coroki (Philip Ahn) ask Daisy to help them organize a local ceremony to celebrate the Philippines "independence" and win back the locals good favor. Daisy tips off Madden about the plan who finally reveals to Bonifacio his girlfriend is on their side. Madden and Bonifacio lead an attack on the ceremony, killing most of the Japanese troops and reuniting Bonifacio with Daisy. But young Maximo is captured by the Japanese and tortured. Maximo relents and promises to lead the Japanese to the guerillas camp. As the transport truck carrying troops draws closer to Madden, Maximo grabs the wheel and drive the truck off a cliff, killing himself along with the enemy troops. Wayne is called back to headquarters for new orders. Bonifacio takes over command of the Filipino Resistance. In 1944, Bonificio and his men arrive in Leyte. Bonifacio is reunited with Madden and Lt. Commander Waite (Lawrence Tierney), who arrived by submarine. Waite orders Madden, Bonifacio, and the resistance to hold a small village and propel a large Japanese force including tanks for 24 hours so American forces can land on the beaches. Will they be able to hold on until American forces arrive?
At times, BACK TO BATAAN feels part documentary and part war film. Montages at the beginning and end of the film show real life survivors from the Cabanatuan prison camp walking back to freedom in a staged march, the images of our American boys returning home signaling the war might be coming to an end. The battle scenes are intense. Vernon L. Walker, the special effects person for the film must have been given a healthy budget as the explosions are powerful for 1945. BACK TO BATAAN doesn't shy away from the killing of the combatants. When it's Americans or Filipinos, the deaths are mostly offscreen. When it's the enemy, director Dmytryk shows their deaths explicitly onscreen. The most heinous death is the murder of the school principal by the Japanese captain, the principal's hung body draped in the American flag he refused to take down. There's no question which side the filmmakers want us to root for and against.
The BACK TO BATAAN filmmakers were drawn to the conflict in the Philippines as the Filipino resistance against the Japanese was equivalent to the American colonists fighting back against the British in 1776. Ironically, the United States considered the Philippines its colony in the late 19th Century after the Spanish-American War. However, the U.S. had always planned to give the Philippines its independence when the Japanese invaded in 1942. After the war was over, the Philippines got their independence on July 4th, 1946 (although later the Philippines changed the day to June 12th commemorating when the Filipino people originally gained their independence from Spain in 1898).
One can forgive John Wayne for not joining a branch of the military during World War II. The man was thirty-four years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He had had a family. He wanted to join director John Ford in his unit but kept postponing enlisting until he finished his next film. Then, Republic Pictures which Wayne was under contract to threatened to sue him if he left to join the war. Wayne like other actors like Humphrey Bogart and Errol Flynn made war films promoting the war effort and democracy as well as public appearances to keep up support for the American troops. In BACK TO BATAAN, Wayne's Colonel Madden is a fatherly type, both hard on his men yet caring. Anthony Quinn's Bonifacio is like an adopted son to Madden. Madden has to build him up at times when Bonifacio has doubts about his abilities or that his former love Daisy has gone over to the enemy. There's no love interest for Wayne in this war film unlike THEY WERE EXPENDABLE where Wayne courts nurse Donna Reed. It's strictly defeating the enemy for Wayne in BACK TO BATAAN.
Anthony Quinn was one of those acting chameleons who could play any ethnicity. In BACK TO BATAAN, he's Filipino Andreas Bonifacio, carrying the weight of his grandfather's legacy as a national hero to find the strength to lead his countryman to repel the Japanese occupiers of his homeland. Quinn would play Arabs in both THE ROAD TO MOROCCO (1942) with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby and later in David Lean's LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962). He would play Greeks in J. Lee Thompson's THE GUNS OF NAVARAONE (1962) and Alexis Zorba, the title character in Michael Cacoyannis's ZORBA THE GREEK (1964). He was French artist Paul Gauguin in Vincent Minnelli's LUST FOR LIFE (1956) with Kirk Douglas as Vincent Van Gogh. He was Italian in Federico Fellini's LA STRADA (1954) as a sadistic circus strongman. In truth, Quinn was Mexican American, born in Mexico before moving to Los Angeles in his teens. Quinn would play Mexican characters as well including Elia Kazan's VIVA ZAPATA (1952) about the Mexican Revolutionary Emiliano Zapata played by Marlon Brando. Quinn played Brando's brother Eufemio and would win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, a first for a Mexican American. Quinn often played masculine, over the top roles but his Bonifacio in BACK TO BATAAN is a more sensitive, nuanced performance.
Other familiar faces in BACK TO BATAAN include Beulah Bondi, who has one of two female roles in BACK TO BATAAN playing the feisty schoolteacher and den mother to the guerilla movement Bertha Barnes. Bondi was a favorite of director Frank Capra, appearing in Capra's MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939) and as James Stewart's mother Mrs. Bailey in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946). Known more for playing tough guy characters in film noirs like Robert Wise's BORN TO KILL (1947) and Richard Fleischer's BODYGUARD (1948), Lawrence Tierney is cast against type in BACK TO BATAAN as Lt. Commander Waite. Tierney appears toward the finale of the film, ordering Wayne and Quinn to hold a small village until the American Invasion begins. Tierney would later be known to a new generation of film fans appearing in Quentin Tarantino's RESERVOIR DOGS (1992).
Fely Franquelli who has the other female role in BACK TO BATAAN as Radio Manila provocateur and Quinn's love interest Dalisay Delgado was actually a Filipino dancer and choreographer born in Manila. Franquelli would only appear in four films in her career but two were related to Bataan. The other film was Richard Thorpe's CRY 'HAVOC' (1943). Dalisay Delgado would be her biggest role. Philip Ahn who plays Colonel Coroki has one of those faces you feel you've seen in countless film and television shows which would be true. Because he was Asian, Ahn was stereotyped early in his career to play Japanese and Chinese characters (like one of the baddies in BACK TO BATAAN). Ironically, Ahn is Korean. Look for Ahn in films like Josef von Sternberg's MACAO (1952) and as the shrewd Master Kan in the TV series KUNG FU (1972 - 1975).
Both director Dmytryk and co-screenwriter Ben Barzman had communist sympathies which conflicted with star Wayne's All-American patriotic stance. By some accounts, Wayne and Dmytrky hated each other during the filming while others expressed that the two men had a friendly, respectful working relationship. Dmytryk was a hot commodity before BACK TO BATAAN with earlier hits like MURDER, MY SWEET (1944) based on Raymond Chandler's novel starring Dick Powell and the film noir gem CROSSFIRE (1947) with Robert Mitchum, Robert Young, and Robert Ryan. But Dmytryk's leftist views would catch up with him. He was one of the "Hollywood Ten" who refused to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in Washington D.C. and was thrown in prison for several months until Dmytryk did name Hollywood people he said were communists. Surprisingly, Dmytryk was able to resume directing although the Hollywood community never forgave him for his betrayal. Dmytryk's notable later films included THE CAINE MUTINY (1954) with Humphrey Bogart and Fred MacMurray, RAINTREE COUNTRY (1957) with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, and MIRAGE (1965) starring Gregory Peck, Diane Baker, and Walter Matthau.
BACK TO BATAAN is one of those rare films where the plot of the film is almost in real time with events that were happening in the Philippines. Ultimately, American and Australian forces did land on the island of Leyte in October 1944 and team up with the Filipino resistance to destroy the remainder of the Japanese Navy. General Dougla MacArthur who had to flee the Philippines in 1942 would make his triumphant appearance, honoring his proclamation that he would return. Because of the changing events in the Philippines, BACK TO BATAAN's plot sometimes suffers around the middle section, losing its momentum a bit until the final mission is revealed toward the end.
John Wayne would continue to make movies about World War II even after WWII had ended. Wayne thought the public would be bored of war movies, but moviegoers wanted more of their favorite movie star battling the Axis Forces. Wayne would star in Allen Dwan's SANDS OF IWO JIMA (1949) and Nicholas Ray's FLYING LEATHERNECKS (1951) co-starring Robert Ryan about the Battle of Guadalcanal. Later in his career, Wayne would star and direct one of the first films about the Vietnam War, the controversial THE GREEN BERETS (1968) co-starring David Janssen. The Vietnam War was very unpopular in the late 1960s, but THE GREEN BERETS treated the conflict like it was an old-fashioned World War II film.
BACK TO BATAAN was one of the last Hollywood war films to be released before World War II ended. It's a unique film as it's as much about the resolve and determination of the Filipino people as it is about the United States military forces having to retreat for a period of time leaving thousands of American and Filipino fighters to end up in prisoner of war camps until the U.S. could gather up reinforcements to repel the Imperial Japanese military. It's also a classic Hollywood war movie starring John Wayne with exciting fight sequences, a romantic subplot, and villains that the audience can boo and hiss at.
