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IMDbPro

Three Came Home

  • 19501950
  • Not RatedNot Rated
  • 1h 46m
IMDb RATING
7.3/10
2K
YOUR RATING
Three Came Home (1950)
DramaWar
During Word War II, American author Agnes Newton Keith is imprisoned by the Japanese in various POW camps in North Borneo and Sarawak.During Word War II, American author Agnes Newton Keith is imprisoned by the Japanese in various POW camps in North Borneo and Sarawak.During Word War II, American author Agnes Newton Keith is imprisoned by the Japanese in various POW camps in North Borneo and Sarawak.
IMDb RATING
7.3/10
2K
YOUR RATING
    • Jean Negulesco
    • Nunnally Johnson(screen play)
    • Agnes Newton Keith(book)
  • Stars
    • Claudette Colbert
    • Patric Knowles
    • Florence Desmond
    • Jean Negulesco
    • Nunnally Johnson(screen play)
    • Agnes Newton Keith(book)
  • Stars
    • Claudette Colbert
    • Patric Knowles
    • Florence Desmond
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 47User reviews
    • 21Critic reviews
  • See production, box office & company info
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards

    Photos17

    Three Came Home (1950)
    Three Came Home (1950)
    Three Came Home (1950)
    Three Came Home (1950)
    Three Came Home (1950)
    Three Came Home (1950)
    Patric Knowles in Three Came Home (1950)
    Three Came Home (1950)
    Three Came Home (1950)
    Three Came Home (1950)
    Three Came Home (1950)
    Three Came Home (1950)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Claudette Colbert
    Claudette Colbert
    • Agnes Newton Keith
    Patric Knowles
    Patric Knowles
    • Harry Keith
    Florence Desmond
    Florence Desmond
    • Betty Sommers
    Sessue Hayakawa
    Sessue Hayakawa
    • Colonel Michio Suga
    Sylvia Andrew
    • Henrietta Thomas
    Mark Keuning
    Mark Keuning
    • George Keith
    Phyllis Morris
    • Sister Rose
    Howard Chuman
    • Lieutenant Nakata
    John Burton
    • Elderly Resident
    • (uncredited)
    Melinda Casey
    • English Girl
    • (uncredited)
    Campbell Copelin
    • English Radio Announcer
    • (uncredited)
    Leslie Denison
    • English Radio Announcer
    • (uncredited)
    Devi Dja
    • Ah Yin
    • (uncredited)
    Frank Emi
    • Japanese Soldier
    • (uncredited)
    Doreen Mary English
    • Woman Prisoner
    • (uncredited)
    Stanley Fraser
    • Englishman
    • (uncredited)
    Alex Frazer
    • Dr. Bandy
    • (uncredited)
    Jerry Fujikawa
    Jerry Fujikawa
    • Japanese Soldier
    • (uncredited)
      • Jean Negulesco
      • Nunnally Johnson(screen play)
      • Agnes Newton Keith(book)
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      It was while filming this movie that Claudette Colbert sustained the back injury that forced her to give up the part of Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950) to Bette Davis.
    • Goofs
      Colonel Suga says he attended the University of Washington for four years and Agnes reveals that she attended Berkeley. Suga goes on to say that Cal "murdered" Washington's football team. However, Tatsugi Suga arrived at Washington in 1924 and during the next four seasons California never defeated Washington. Only one football game would fit Suga's description: a 33-0 loss in 1933.
    • Quotes

      [first lines]

      Agnes Newton Keith: Six-degrees north of the Equator, in the heart of the East Indies, lies Sandakan, the tiny capital of British North Borneo. In Sandakan in 1941, there were 15 thousand Asiatics, 79 Europeans, and 1 American. I was the American. My name is Agnes Keith. I was born in Oak Park, Illinois, and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. My husband is Harry Keith, a colonial official of British North Borneo. Borneo became my home when Harry and I were married. And it was in Sandakan that I bore one child, and lost another. And it was in Sandakan that we waited - 45 white men, 24 wives, and 11 children - through the anxious days of 1940 and '41. Certain only of one thing: that sooner or later, Japanese guns would join in the thunders of war, and Japanese troops would come down through the East Indies. The men waited because it was their duty; the women because it was their choice.

    • Connections
      Featured in The Slanted Screen (2006)
    • Soundtracks
      You Say the Sweetest Things (Baby)
      (uncredited)

      Music by Harry Warren

      Played on the radio before and after the news flash regarding Pearl Harbor

    User reviews47

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    An Unusual Side of WWII
    First-rate production from TCF. The studio's craftsmanship is really in evidence in this atmospheric and moving account of one woman's heroic effort at surviving Japanese internment during WWII. A highly de-glamorized Colbert is simply superb as real-life Britisher Agnes Keith imprisoned on Borneo with her small boy in the early days of the war. Those nightmarish jungle scenes with the wind and the foliage have stayed with me over the years and cast an appropriately unstable mood over the movie as a whole. Credit ace director Jean Negulesco for bringing out the film's strong emotional values without sentimentalizing them. He continues to be an underrated movie-maker from the dynamic studio period.

    We know from Sessue Hayakawa's cultivated Japanese colonel that Hollywood is changing its perceptions of our former enemy. Cruel stereotypes do continue (presumably based on fact), but the colonel's character is humanized to an unusually sympathetic degree-- even his loss in the recent atomic bombing of Hiroshima is mentioned. Then too, it's well to remember that during the war our government interned US citizens of Japanese extraction in pretty inhospitable camps along the eastern Sierras, and probably illegally so.

    Anyway, the movie has the look and feel of the real thing, while the producers should be saluted for using as many actual locations as possible. The fidelity shows. Since the story is the thing, the cast appropriately has no stars except for Colbert, which helps produce the realistic effect. There are a number of riveting and well-staged scenes. But the staging of the final crowd re-union scene strikes me as particularly well done. And, of course, there's that final heart-breaking view of the hilltop that still moves me, even 60 years later. All in all, this is the old Hollywood system at its sincere and de-glamorized best.
    helpful•9
    1
    • dougdoepke
    • Feb 19, 2009

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • February 20, 1950 (United States)
      • United States
      • English
      • Japanese
    • Also known as
    • Filming locations
      • Sandakan, Sandakan Division, Sabah, Malaysia
    • Production company
      • Twentieth Century Fox
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

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    • 1 hour 46 minutes
      • Black and White

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