The Douglas

I spent the evening with baby watching In Harm's Way on American Movie Classics. Ostensibly a 1965 vehicle for John Wayne as a take charge admiral (starring opposite Patricia Neal as a Navy nurse and his main squeeze), the film is a much more interesting portrayal of his executive officer played by Kirk Douglas. An embittered veteran driven to drink by an incompetent commander, Douglas sobers up when Wayne arrives on the scene and makes Douglas his executive officer. After commiting a terrible crime, Douglas seeks to escape disgrace and punishment and redeem himself on a one man suicide mission that discovers the enemy fleet, including the legendary Japanese battleship Yamato. Having provided the intelligence crucial to victory Douglas perishes in a dogfight with four enemy Zeroes. I thought the role particularly interesting because it foreshadows the kind of role his son Michael would later play, rather than the more unidimensional Douglas of such films as Spartacus. The timing of the film, made as the nation was sinking deeper into the quagmire of Vietnam, is cause for reflection: hearkeing back to the moral clarity of World War II, the film is even shot in black and white to recall the old WW II propaganda films.