A Guy Named Joe (1943) on Netflix
Approved19432hDramaFantasyRomanceWar
Pete Sandidge, a bomber pilot in England, loves Dorinda Durston, a ferry pilot. Killed on a mission, he is sent back from heaven to guide a young pilot, Ted Randall.
- Watch on NetflixThis title is not on Netflix right now. Please check back later for updates.
- Watch on Prime
- Watch on NordVPN
- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb6.9/103,301 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes60%
Trailer
Plot summary
Dorinda Durston ferries aircraft around the United Kingdom as an American civilian pilot, and the man she loves is Pete Sandidge, a B-25 pilot whose luck in the war has held so far. Pete's commanding officer, Nails Kilpatrick, sends him and his crew to Scotland, then offers him a transfer home as a flight instructor, and Dorinda asks him to accept. He agrees, flies one more mission with his friend Al Yackey, and is killed. Pete walks in clouds, meets the General, and is told to return to Earth and pass his knowledge to Ted Randall, a fighter pilot training in the South Pacific.
Cast
Show all 20 cast
- Bill Arthuras Cadet(uncredited)
- George Atkinsonas Waiter(uncredited)
- Dora Bakeras Charwoman(uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A Guy Named Joe (1943)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While making A Guy Named Joe in 1943, Van Johnson was badly hurt in a car crash: the impact cut open his forehead and damaged his skull so badly that doctors put a plate in his head, and he also needed brain surgery.
- MGM wanted to replace the injured Van Johnson, but Spencer Tracy persuaded the studio to halt filming until he could return, which he did after four months recovering at Keenan Wynn's home.
- Because A Guy Named Joe was shot both before and after the crash, Van Johnson appears in it with and without the forehead scars he carried for the rest of his life.
SPOILER
Censors at the Production Code Administration objected to the original ending, in which Irene Dunne's character crashes after bombing an ammunition dump and is reunited with Pete, calling it a willful act of suicide; she was recalled from Mexico City to film a revised ending that reunited her with Van Johnson's character.SPOILER
In the scene where Spencer Tracy's character is killed, he dive-bombs a German aircraft carrier, though Germany never had an operational carrier in service during the war, and the War Department reportedly opposed the sequence as conflicting with American propaganda about Japanese kamikaze pilots.- Budget restrictions ruled out location shooting, so all flying scenes were staged at the MGM studios, with footage from USAAF bases added by a backdrop process and real aircraft kept on the ground; Irene Dunne's key scene flying a P-38 was recreated at Drew Field, Florida using a surplus P-38E from Omaha.
