A Guy Named Joe

Plot

Pete Sandidge is the reckless pilot of a North American B-25 Mitchell flying out of England during World War II. He is in love with Air Transport Auxiliary pilot Dorinda Durston, an American civilian pilot ferrying aircraft all over the United Kingdom. Pete's commanding officer "Nails" Kilpatrick first transfers Pete and his crew to a base in Scotland, then offers him a transfer back to the United States to be a flight instructor. Dorinda begs him to accept, and Pete agrees before embarking on one last mission with his best friend Al Yackey to spot a German aircraft carrier. Wounded after an attack by an enemy fighter, Pete orders his crew to parachute from the plane before he bombs the carrier and crashes into the sea.

Pete finds himself walking in clouds, where he first recognizes old friend Dick Rumney. Pete is uneasy as he remembers that Dick had been killed in a fiery crash. Dick ushers him to a meeting with "The General", who gives him an assignment. Pete is to be returned to Earth, where a year has elapsed, to convey his experience and knowledge to Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter pilot Ted Randall at a flight school in the South Pacific. Ted's commanding officer is Al Yackey. Ted meets Dorinda, now a ferry pilot with the Women Airforce Service Pilots in New Guinea. They gradually fall in love, and Ted proposes marriage. She accepts, much to Pete's jealous dismay. When Dorinda learns from Al that Ted has been given an extremely dangerous assignment to destroy the largest Japanese ammunition dump in the Pacific, she steals his aircraft. Pete guides her to the successful completion of the mission. Pete accepts fate and knows that his job is done.

Cast

Spencer Tracy as Pete Sandidge

Irene Dunne as Dorinda Durston

Van Johnson as Ted Randall

Ward Bond as Al Yackey

James Gleason as "Nails" Kilpatrick

Lionel Barrymore as The General

Barry Nelson as Dick Rumney

Esther Williams as Ellen Bright, a USO hostess

Henry O'Neill as Colonel Sykes

Don DeFore as James J. Rourke (as Don De Fore)

Charles Smith as Sanderson

Addison Richards as Major Corbett

Kirk Alyn as Officer in Heaven (uncredited)

Maurice Murphy as Capt. Robertson (uncredited)

Production

A Guy Named Joe introduced Van Johnson in his first major role. During filming in 1943, Johnson was seriously injured in an automobile accident. The crash lacerated his forehead and damaged his skull so severely that doctors inserted a plate in his head. Johnson also underwent brain surgery. MGM wanted to replace Johnson, but Tracy convinced the studio to suspend filming until Johnson could return to work, which he did after four months of recovery at the home of Keenan Wynn. Because the film was shot before and after the accident, Johnson is seen in the film with and without the forehead scars that he bore for the rest of his life.

During Johnson's period of recovery, Tracy recorded broadcasts for Armed Forces Radio and visited hospitals along the California coast and occasionally appearing at the Hollywood Canteen. Irene Dunne was required to begin work on the MGM film The White Cliffs of Dover, so she performed in both films concurrently after Johnson returned.

Budget restrictions precluded location shooting, and all the flying scenes were staged at the MGM studios. Footage shot at various United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) bases was incorporated using an exterior backdrop process. Authentic aircraft were used, although they remained on the ground. The pivotal scene with Dunne flying a Lockheed P-38 Lightning was recreated at Drew Field, Florida utilizing a surplus USAAF P-38E from a base in Omaha, where it had been used for instructional purposes. Electric motors drove the propellers. The miniature work was performed by the MGM special-effects team of A. Arnold Gillespie, Donald Jahrus and Warren Newcombe that later worked on Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)—which also co-starred Johnson and Tracy.

During the scene in which Tracy's character is killed, he is shown launching a suicidal divebomb run on a German aircraft carrier, but Germany never had an operational aircraft carrier in service during the war. This scene was reportedly initially opposed by the War Department as it conflicted with American war propaganda regarding Japanese kamikaze pilots.

The Production Code Administration objected to the film's ending, which originally depicted Dunne’s character crashing after bombing an enemy ammunition dump, thereby reuniting her with Pete. The censors felt that this represented a willful act of suicide, which, under the Production Code, could never be “justified, or glorified, or used specifically to defeat the ends of justice.” Dunne was recalled from Mexico City to film a revised ending in which she is reunited with Johnson's character.

Aircraft used in the film

Lockheed P-38E Lightning fighter ("static", propellers turned by electric motors)

North American B-25 Mitchell bomber (special effects scale model)

Vultee BT-13 Valiant trainer (static but airworthy aircraft on loan from Luke Field, Arizona)

North American P-51A Mustangs as Luftwaffe fighters

Martin B-26 Marauders as Japanese bombers

North American AT-6 Texan trainers at Luke Field

C-36 or C-40 in some scenes, C-47 and C-60 in others

Release

Because MGM was unable to find a Los Angeles-area theater in which to show A Guy Named Joe by the end of 1943, it was ineligible for that year's Academy Awards. It finally opened at Grauman's Chinese Theatre and several other area locations on March 16, 1944.

The film finished among the top-grossing films of 1944. According to MGM records, the film earned $3,970,000 in the U.S. and Canada and $1,393,000 overseas, resulting in a profit of $1,066,000.

Reception

Rotten Tomatoes gave it a rating of 60% based on five reviews.

In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther wrote:The people at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had a dandy idea by the tail when they set out to make the picture ... The idea had blithesome implications, as well as spiritual ones, and it looked for a while as though Metro and its people were going to play it well. But somehow, as often happens, they yanked it around too much; they let it go slack at the wrong spot and then jerked up on it too hard. And the consequence was that the fleet thing got completely away from them. The last we saw of it, it was heading for the horizon like a bat out of—well! Too bad—because, at one point in there we'd have sworn it was going to be great.

Critic Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times called the film "one of the season's more distinctive films" and wrote:

"A Guy Named Joe" ... almost meets the dictionary definition of tragicomedy—a blend of tragic and comic elements. It is not entirely successful because the blend is not perfect; a hyphen remains between "tragic" and "comic." The hyphen is invisible, even intangible but it is there. It is the split between life and death. ... It owes most, I think, to the wise, humorous and many-faceted performance given by Spencer Tracy, and also to some beautiful writing by Dalton Trumbo."

In The Nation in 1944, critic James Agee wrote:

In bare outline and idea this story offers a good workable metaphor for tradition in an art of skill, and wonderful possibilities for drama. ... But to make such a film—above all at such a time as this—would require extraordinary taste, honesty, and courage. The makers of A Guy Named Joe had courage, if a moral idiot has it; I doubt whether taste and honesty enter into it at all. I can hardly conceive of a picture more stonily impious. Joe's affability in the afterlife is enough to discredit the very idea that death in combat amounts to anything more than getting a freshly pressed uniform ... The people who have the best right to picket God on this matter, or at least Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, are the dead whom the film is supposed to honor; failing that, widows, and the surviving pupils and lovers, can hardly make adequate protest.

Awards

The team of David Boehm and Chandler Sprague were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Story in 1944, which was won by Leo McCarey for Going My Way.