Gung Ho! (1943) on Netflix
NR19431h 28mActionAdventureDramaWar
Lieutenant C.J. Cristoforos puts out the call: the Marine Corps wants volunteers for a hazardous mission. Colonel Thorwald trains the men who answer into a raider unit built on working together.
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Plot summary
The Marine Corps seeks volunteers for a hazardous mission, and the men who answer are a mixed lot: a hillbilly who says he has already killed a man, an ordained minister who asks for the most dangerous assignment, a boxer out of poverty, two battling half-brothers, and a Filipino who teaches knife fighting. Lieutenant C.J. Cristoforos and Colonel Thorwald put them through training built on the unit's Gung Ho sessions, where every man speaks regardless of rank. In Hawaii they train in jungle conditions and see the wreckage of the Pearl Harbor attack, and a radio bulletin brings word of the Battle of Guadalcanal. Their assignment is an island in the South Pacific that the United States once held and Japan now commands.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Gung Ho! (1943)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Producer Walter Wanger's film about the Makin Island raid was forced to invent a fictional Lt. Col. Thorwald because the U.S. Navy's film liaison, Lt. Albert J. Bolton, insisted neither Evans Carlson nor his executive officer James Roosevelt be singled out.
- The Japanese soldiers in Gung Ho! were played by Chinese and Filipino extras. The movie was filmed at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego and Camp Pendleton with Marine extras and technical advisors, including Carlson, Maghakian and Lt. Wilfred Sylvio LeFrancois, all Navy Cross recipients from the actual raid.
- The screenplay included a Greek-extraction Raider lieutenant based on Marine Raider Lt. John Apergis and Gunnery Sergeant Victor "Transport" Maghakian, who took part in the real Makin Island raid and survived the war.
- Evans Carlson, who led the real Makin Island raid, wrote to producer Walter Wanger that he was pleased with the film even though many of its incidents never happened in the actual raid.
- The film's fast-moving template of misfits handpicked by an inspiring leader, trained to perfection and then using their skills against a larger enemy influenced many later war, adventure and western films.
- In the early 1960s Louis Marx and Company released a "Gung Ho Commando Outfit" for children based on the film.
