Watch Joe Smith, American For Free

The Age of Commercialism

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

***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".

This is an exceptionally well-written and directed B-film from MGM directed in crisp, tense style by RICHARD THORPE.ROBERT YOUNG is at his most affable best as a typical young man of the '40s era who is sought by the government to work on plans for a new bomb-sight design which he must keep top secret. Spies kidnap him and it's while he's being held hostage that he forces himself to remember how he met his wife (MARSHA HUNT) and there are a series of homespun scenes with Young and his son, DARRYL HICKMAN.But even though loaded with flashbacks, Thorpe keeps the action and suspense alive by cutting back and forth between those scenes and clips of his brutal torture by the spies. Fortunately, he keeps his wits about him and is able to recall various things about the hiding place and his captors that help the FBI capture them in the end. A clever series of incidents leads to the manner in which he's able to lead them to the hideout.Well done in crisp style with Robert Young and Marsha Hunt making an attractive pair in the leading roles. Darryl Hickman is effective as the son who has a secret of his own that he's unwilling to tell.Well worth watching as a bit of American propaganda at the outset of WWII.

I haven't seen this movie in about 40 years but it scared the daylights out of me as a kid. To me Robert Young was Jim Anderson, the exemplary dad of Father Knows Best. So it was really disturbing to see him captured by enemy agents and tortured. I don't remember what they did to him but it was terrible. It seems like they smashed his fingers with pliers. Another cool aspect of this movie is the way Robert Young was able to remember the way to the enemy agents' hideout by sound, even though he was taken there blindfolded. To this day I try to listen to what things sound like whenever I am traveling some place, in case I have to go back there again.This movie also has an excellent visual texture to it -- shot in black and white with terrific use of shadows, sinister bad guys in dark clothing, bulky old cars.

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!