Joe Smith, American (1942)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Such a frustrating disappointment

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This one's good. Released shortly after the United States had entered WW2, it stars Robert Young as a guy working on a special project for the government who is kidnapped by enemy agents. They beat him up for hours to try and find out what he knows. It's an exciting, fast-paced movie that clocks in at barely over sixty minutes. It reminds me of a longer version of the Crime Does Not Pay short films. If you're familiar with that series I think you'll see what I'm talking about. The cast is good, with Robert Young doing a terrific job in the lead and nice support from the lovely Marsha Hunt as his wife and a young Darryl Hickman as his son. Recognizable character actors make up the rest of the cast. It's an unabashedly patriotic and entertaining movie that doesn't waste a minute of its runtime. Worth a look for most classic film fans.

***SPOILERS*** Family man hard worker and loyal American aircraft plant worker Joe Smith, Robert Young, has his loyalty put to the test in the movie "Joe Smith, American". That's when he's kidnapped by four thugs Punchy, Noel Madison, Shoe Stain, Dan Costello, and the Turk, Joseph Anthony, together with their leader Snakering, ???. The evil quartet try to beat top secret information out of Joe on a new US Military bomb-sight that he's working on at the plant.This torture goes on for hours until knowing that Joe, no matter what they do to him, won't talk they take him for a ride in the country that to be the last ride of his life. Joe despite having the living hell beat out of him still has the presents of mind to remember every detail of what happened and even left clues to where his abductor's hideout is. Joe also makes a daring escape from the moving vehicle that almost cost him his life, by getting hit by a speeding car, when he being both tied up and blindfolded jumps out or the car!***SPOILERS*** Now rescued by the local L.A police and patched up in a nearby hospital Joe leads the cops, by remembering every detail of his kidnapping, to where the bad guys are hiding who get caught flat footed by paying a game of gin and letting their guard down! Still Mr. Big-Snakering-is yet to be found and arrested but that's all solved at the end of the movie. That's when the big jerk blows his cover by trying to be a good guy and forgetting to take, the only way that Joe can identify the rat, his ring off!P.S The Film "Joe Smith, American" has in its cast Johnny Smith, Darryl Hickman, Joe's ten year old son and Frank Faylen as the guy in the hospital waiting room, in a flashback, where Joe is waiting to find out whom his wife Mary, Marsha Hunt, would give birth to as the couples first child a boy or a girl. Both Hickman and Faylen would be reunited almost twenty years later as father and son on the hit TV show "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis".

It was 1942 and the USA had just entered WW II, courtesy of the Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor. I wish I knew exactly when this movie actually was filmed, whether before or after that attack.Robert Young, whom many of us got to know really well on later TV series' like "Father Knows Best" and "Marcus Wellby, MD" is Joe Smith. What a generic name, likely chosen to be representative of any citizen in 1942. Joe goes to work in a defense-related job, and thereafter is kidnapped and grilled by men who wanted him to reveal secrets regarding the military plans.We see that they run him off the road at night, then take him to a place where they grill him, threaten him and his family, and beat him up. We can hear the "voice in his head" telling him to think of other things so it won't hurt so much. Also telling him that he swore he would not reveal any secrets.Marsha Hunt is his wife, Mary Hewett Smith. His son Johnny is played by young Darryl Hickman, brother of now more famous Dyawne Hickman of "Dobie Gillis" TV fame.An interesting movie from an interesting period in US history. It drives home the importance of keeping secrets.SPOILERS: After Joe fails to give away any secrets, he is taken away in a car, blindfolded. But he makes a mark on the door of the room he had been held in, and as the car travels listens for clues to where they are, tar strips in a road, a "carvival" sound, etc. When he gets a chance, he jumps out of the car and the crooks, not wanting to get hit on the highway, leave him, injured, on the side of the road. He eventually gets rescued, cops come to his aid, and they track down the crooks with his clues, reversing the order. The mark on the door proves he was there. It turns out one of the crooks was an "inside" man with law enforcement.

Refreshingly free of cant and surprisingly low on propaganda, Joe Smith American is one of the best 'B' features you'll ever see--it was so good, in fact, that it opened in 1942 atop the bill at movie theatres in New York City. Robert Young plays the titular character, an all American 'Joe' who won't spill his guts about a secret bomb sight to the bad guys--even after being tortured and threatened with death. The torture sequence is surely one of the most grueling things committed to celluloid from the period, and in addition to being spectacularly shot by Charles Lawton Jr. was masterfully lit by one of MGM's superbly trained and uncredited craftsmen. The cloth binding used to blind and gag Young, coupled with the narrative use of his inner voice, anticipates the bleak and distressing Johnny Got His Gun by thirty years. And while the film is certainly a tribute to American patriotism--witness the fascinating schoolyard rendition of My Country Tis of Thee, complete with an odd fascist style salute to the flag--it pointedly allows Young's character to sleep in on Sundays and miss church!