Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)

In the wake of Pearl Harbor, a young lieutenant leaves his expectant wife to volunteer for a secret bombing mission which will take the war to the Japanese homeland.

Director:

Mervyn LeRoy

Writers:

Dalton Trumbo (screen play), Ted W. Lawson (based on the book) (as Captain Ted W. Lawson)

Stars:

Spencer Tracy, Van Johnson, Robert Walker

Won 1 Oscar. Another 1 win & 1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Van Johnson	...	Ted Lawson
Robert Walker	...	David Thatcher
Tim Murdock	...	Dean Davenport
Don DeFore	...	Charles McClure
Herbert Gunn	...	Bob Clever (as Gordon McDonald)
Phyllis Thaxter	...	Ellen Lawson
Stephen McNally	...	'Doc' White (as Horace McNally)
Spencer Tracy	...	Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle
John R. Reilly	...	'Shorty' Manch
Robert Mitchum	...	Bob Gray
Scott McKay	...	Davey Jones
Donald Curtis	...	Lieut. Randall
Louis Jean Heydt	...	Lieut. Miller
William 'Bill' Phillips	...	Don Smith (as Wm. 'Bill' Phillips)
Douglas Cowan	...	'Brick' Holstrom

Storyline

The amazingly detailed true story of "The Doolittle Raid" based on the personal account by Doolittle Raider Ted Lawson. Stunned by Pearl Harbor and a string of defeats, America needed a victory - badly. To that end, Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, a former air racer and stunt pilot, devises a plan for a daring raid on the heart of Japan itself. To do this, he must train army bomber pilots to do something no one ever dreamed possible - launch 16 fully loaded bombers from an aircraft carrier! Remarkable in its accuracy, this movie even uses film footage from the actual raid.

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Plot Keywords:

aircraft carrier | japan | doolittle raid | air attack | army air corps | 

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Taglines:

M-G-M's Great Thrill Romance

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Genres:

Drama | History | War

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Certificate:

Passed

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English Mandarin

Release Date:

November 1944 (USA)

Also Known As:

Treinta segundos sobre Tokio

Filming Locations:

Stage 15, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios -10202 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$2,900,000 (estimated)

Gross USA:

$4,297,000, 31 December 1944

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$6,200,000, 31 December 1944

Company Credits

Production Co:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

138 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

According to the documentary Going Hollywood: The War Years (1988), for this movie, the MGM studio recreated the section of an air craft carrier flat top on a sound stage large enough to fit four genuine B25 bomber planes whilst a whole sixty foot miniature was also built, placed in the studio tank doubling as the ocean. Moreover, this special effects Academy Award winning movie utilized model planes, hydraulic jacks, wires, motors, pulleys, and a miniature model of Tokyo used to show the bombing of that city with mini explosions.

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Goofs

As the Ruptured Duck is making its bomb run over Tokyo The bombs are exploding ahead of the ship and in one instance the plane flies through the smoke of the explosion. Since they are dropped bombs and not rockets all of the explosions would have been well behind the ship.

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Quotes

Ted Lawson: When Lieut. Ted Lawson sees the Ruptured Duck's fuselage sticking up out of the ocean after crashing he says; "I lost my ship. I lost my ship."

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Connections

Referenced in Seinfeld: The Keys (1992)

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Soundtracks

Anchors Aweigh
(1906) (uncredited)
Music by Charles A. Zimmerman
Lyrics by Alfred Hart Miles and R. Lovell
Played as background music

User Reviews

It's about the Doolittle Raid.

I know it's a World War Two propaganda movie. And I know that Hollywood treatments of historical subjects must be taken with a huge boulder-size grain of salt. That being said, this is a credible movie that is worth watching. The fact is that the Doolittle Raid DID happen, that in early 1942 the outcome of the war against Japan was at best uncertain, and that Japanese aggression post Pearl Harbor posed a clear and imminent threat to the United States. It's hard to believe that Japan was THAT powerful, but it was. Japan occupied or controlled about one-quarter of the surface of the world, including most of eastern China, all of Manchuria, the ENTIRE Korean peninsula, ALL of southeast Asia, including ALL of Indonesia and Singapore, the Philippines, and the entire western Pacific Ocean. And Japan accomplished this ALL BY ITSELF. So the Doolittle Raid was a truly momentous event, as the movie aptly shows. The Doolittle Raid marked the beginning of the end for Japan, because it blew away the myth of Japanese invincibility and proved to the world that it was just a matter of time before a fleet of sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers would be followed by huge air armadas of B-29s that would crush Japanese militarism for all time and eventually convert Japan from an implacable enemy to an allie and a friend.