I was an American Spy

Another movie that I put on my DVR because it sounded moderately interesting was the World War II docudrama I Was an American Spy. Recently, I got around to watching it, so now is the time for me to do a review on it.

The movie opens with US Army 4-star general Mark Clark as himself informing us that we're going to see the true story of one Claire Phillips (Ann Dvorak) and hoping that, if Americans should ever be faced with such danger again, would respond with as much courage as Claire did. More amusingly, however, is that Clark seems to keep looking off to the side, when it suddenly hit me that Clark is likely looking at cue cards! Clark was no professional actor or even voiceover guy.

Flash back to the morning of Dec. 8, 1941, in Manila, which was part of the US territory of the Philippines at the time. Now, you'll recall the date of Dec. 7, but since Manila is something like 18 hours ahead, the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred in the early hours of Dec. 8 Manila time, and most people wouldn't have heard about it until the following morning. Needless to say, when Claire wakes up, the place is a mad-house. She works at a nightclub and has a foster daughter, and everybody is telling her to get the hell out of the Philippines since it's clear the Japanese are going to attack.

Claire is obscenely naïve, however, for a woman working in a place like this. She's got an American soldier boyfriend in Sgt. John Phillips (Douglas Kennedy), whom she's been hoping to marry. She thinks she can just call up the base and get in touch with him. Eventually, he does show up, but it's only to let her know briefly they're going to be split up. Claire, her daughter, and a Filipina friend leave Manila, but they're well behind most of the westerners when an American GI drives by in a jeep to inform them he's part of the mop-up crew. Still, by some miracle, Claire is spotted and reunited with Sgt. John just long enough for them to get married.

Some time later, Claire is rescued again, this time by a band of American guerrillas who, for whatever reason, all got separated from their units and escaped to the jungle hills from where they're doing what they can for the war effort. Claire, still being an idiot, wants to go down the hill to look for her husband, but the guerrilla commander, Cpl. John Boone (Gene Evans), tries to inform her of the danger. Eventually they do go down the hill, only to find the Japanese forcing a bunch of soldiers on what we now know as the Bataan Death March. Amazingly, Sgt. John is among them. But he tries to stop for water and gets shot by the Japanese for his troubles. That night, Claire shoots a Japanese soldier.

Cpl. John tells Claire that what the guerrillas really need is intelligence. Claire thinks she can provide that, as the Japanese are less likely to suspect a woman and because she's less use to the guerrillas in the jungle than she is trying to gather intelligence. So she decides to get herself smuggled back into Manila, taking the code name "High Pockets" when Cpl. John sees her stashing stuff in her bra!

In Manila, Claire is able to get the passport of a former Italian friend, since deceased, and pass herself off as Italian which will allow her to stay in Manila since Japan and Italy were fellow Axis countries. Claire sets out to gather intelligence, and is quite good at it, at least until the Japanese suspect something is going on and set out to find High Pockets.

I Was an American Spy is a decided B movie, the sort of thing that a decade or two later probably would have been churned out as a TV movie of the week. There's nothing special here, but the movie is at least moderately entertaining.