Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

twhiteson "Joe Smith, American" is a quaint WW2 propaganda piece with the steady Robert Young as the eponymous lead character.Joe Smith is an aircraft factory worker who is selected to work on the installation of a top secret bombsight. He's just a regular Joe alright with a drop-dead gorgeous wife, "Mary" (Marsha Hunt) and an "adorable" 9 yr old moppet of a son, "Johnny" (Darryl Hickman). While being driven to school, Johnny extols his father with his admiration for the Revolutionary War patriot, Nathan Hale, and continues to exhibit a steely determination to keep secret from his parents how he spent his allowance despite being punished for his refusal to reveal. Upon reaching the school, Joe is treated to the sight of Johnny and his classmates reciting the Pledge of Allegiance (in its original form prior to its inclusion of "under God") and singing "My Country tis of Thee." Joe's face beams with patriotic pride as he heads towards work.His son's determination not reveal his secret, the story of Nathan Hale, and the exhibits of patriotism at the school, all serve Joe in good stead to stay silent when he's kidnapped by dastardly spies who are determined to get the bombsight plans from Joe by either bribery, torture or threats of death. Of course, Joe endures and eventually is able to outwit his tormentors, but what do you expect from a WW2 propaganda piece- for the bad guys to actually get away with it?The best one can say about this film is that it's earnest. It truly wears its patriotic heart on its sleeve. Plus, Robert Young approached the role with his usual likable aplomb. Unfortunately, Marsha Hunt is given little to do except look pretty which she does very well. (Although how old was her character supposed to be when she got married and had a kid? 13? 14? Miss Hunt was just 23 or 24 when she made this movie.) However, Darryl Hickman was a truly annoying child actor. He's just so cloyingly cute that it makes one's teeth ache. Usually, I give kid actors some leeway, but Mr. Hickman gave a similar annoying performance in 1945's "Leave To Her Heaven" in which many in the audience were undoubtedly pleased when Gene Tierney's character didn't lift a finger to save his irritating character. So, how he acted here wasn't just a one-off performance.It was a different world. The unabashed patriotism and pride in being an American exhibited in this film is something that is NOT taught in our schools today. How many American school kids today can recite Nathan Hale's once famous final words?

sol ***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".

Neil Doyle 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.

TxMike It was 1942 and the USA had just entered WW II, courtesy of the Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor. I wish I knew exactly when this movie actually was filmed, whether before or after that attack.Robert Young, whom many of us got to know really well on later TV series' like "Father Knows Best" and "Marcus Wellby, MD" is Joe Smith. What a generic name, likely chosen to be representative of any citizen in 1942. Joe goes to work in a defense-related job, and thereafter is kidnapped and grilled by men who wanted him to reveal secrets regarding the military plans.We see that they run him off the road at night, then take him to a place where they grill him, threaten him and his family, and beat him up. We can hear the "voice in his head" telling him to think of other things so it won't hurt so much. Also telling him that he swore he would not reveal any secrets.Marsha Hunt is his wife, Mary Hewett Smith. His son Johnny is played by young Darryl Hickman, brother of now more famous Dyawne Hickman of "Dobie Gillis" TV fame.An interesting movie from an interesting period in US history. It drives home the importance of keeping secrets.SPOILERS: After Joe fails to give away any secrets, he is taken away in a car, blindfolded. But he makes a mark on the door of the room he had been held in, and as the car travels listens for clues to where they are, tar strips in a road, a "carvival" sound, etc. When he gets a chance, he jumps out of the car and the crooks, not wanting to get hit on the highway, leave him, injured, on the side of the road. He eventually gets rescued, cops come to his aid, and they track down the crooks with his clues, reversing the order. The mark on the door proves he was there. It turns out one of the crooks was an "inside" man with law enforcement.