1941 (1979) on Netflix
Six days after the raid on Pearl Harbor, submarine commander Akiro Mitamura picks Hollywood as a target while Sergeant Frank Tree's tank crew and pilot Wild Bill Kelso face California's panic.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb5.7/1040,189 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes39%
Trailer
Plot summary
Six days after the raid on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese submarine under Akiro Mitamura surfaces off the California coast with a German officer, Wolfgang von Kleinschmidt, aboard, and Mitamura chooses Hollywood as his target. Sergeant Frank Tree and his M3 Lee tank crew of the 10th Armored Division eat at Malcolmb's Café, where dishwasher Wally Stephens and fry cook Dennis DeSoto work. Wally hopes to dance with his girlfriend Betty Douglas at a contest at the Crystal Ballroom that evening, but Corporal Chuck Sitarski trips him and both men lose their jobs. In his Curtiss P-40, Captain Wild Bill Kelso hunts for Japanese forces. At Daugherty Field, Major General Joseph W. Stilwell takes questions from reporters, and his aide Loomis Birkhead meets Donna Stratton, Stilwell's secretary.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about 1941 (1979)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- John Wayne, Charlton Heston and James Stewart were all offered the role of Major General Joseph Stilwell, and Wayne was still considered for a cameo, but after reading the script Wayne declined on health grounds and urged Spielberg to drop the project as unpatriotic.
- John Belushi, in character as Captain Wild Bill Kelso, unintentionally fell off the wing of his airplane and landed on his head. It was a real accident and Belushi was hospitalized for several days, but Spielberg left the shot in the movie as it fit Kelso's eccentric character.
- 1941 has been erroneously thought to be a box office disaster because it grossed significantly less than Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but it actually grossed $90 million worldwide and returned a profit, making it a success.
- Co-writer Gale said the plot is loosely based on the Great Los Angeles Air Raid of 1942 and a Japanese submarine's bombardment of the Ellwood oil refinery near Santa Barbara; other events came from real incidents including the Zoot Suit Riots.
- 1941 is the only American film in which the Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune used his own voice speaking Japanese and English; in his previous movies his lines were dubbed in English by Paul Frees.
- At the beginning of the USO riot, one of the uncredited extras dressed as a sailor is the actor James Caan, and Mickey Rourke makes his first screen appearance in the film as Private First Class Reese of Sgt. Tree's tank group.
- According to Steven Spielberg's appearance in the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, Stanley Kubrick suggested that 1941 should have been marketed as a drama rather than a comedy film.
