Pork Chop Hill (1959) on Netflix
April 1953, Korea. Lieutenant Joe Clemons leads K Company up Pork Chop Hill to retake it from a larger Chinese force, with L Company promised to hold his flank.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb7.0/105,910 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Trailer
Plot summary
In April 1953 the Korean War's cease-fire conference is under way at Panmunjom. Nearby, Chinese forces have retaken a piece of ground the Americans call Pork Chop Hill, wiping out the company that held it. Lieutenant Joe Clemons, commander of K Company, is ordered to take the hill back, though the position has no strategic value; his division commander, Colonel Davis, promises that L Company will protect his flank. Clemons tells his friend and second-in-command, Lieutenant Suki Ohashi, that the attack is meant to show American resolve while the talks continue. He splits the company into three platoons, leads one himself, gives Ohashi the second and keeps the third in reserve. At dusk the platoons climb toward the crest under American artillery, and from a bunker a Chinese broadcaster taunts them.
Cast
- George Shibataas Lt. Suki Ohashi
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Pork Chop Hill (1959)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Gregory Peck and director Lewis Milestone clashed over how to play Lieutenant Joe Clemons; before the May 1959 premiere, United Artists cut nearly 20 minutes, which Milestone claimed was because Peck's wife, Veronique, felt her husband entered too late.
- Technical adviser Joe Clemons, a 1951 West Point graduate, bumped into his old classmate George Shibata at a California drugstore and convinced him to try out for Lieutenant Tsugio Ohashi when Hollywood was struggling to cast the part.
- As a joke on his old classmate, technical adviser Joe Clemons made George Shibata wear the only actual flak jacket in the film, while the rest of the cast wore foam rubber reproductions.
- Woody Strode and James Edwards' Black soldiers are based on the real 24th Infantry Regiment, a segregated unit that was poorly trained, poorly equipped and poorly led; a reserve unit was posted behind it because it was expected to break.
- George Shibata, cast as Lieutenant Suki Ohashi, was the first Asian American graduate of West Point, class of 1951, and flew F-86 Sabres out of Taegu Air Force Base during the Korean War.
- Military historian Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall, whose book was the film's source, disliked having sold the movie rights for next-to-nothing and vowed not to make the same mistake again.
