Jack London

If you're a fan of the writing of Jack London, you might be interested in a film about him, as he lived much of the things he wrote about it. And for about an hour, this 1943 film comes fairly close to truth about his early life. But in the final third, it completely comes off the rails and ends up as propaganda against the Japanese.

London, who was one of the first Americans to become rich as a writer of fiction, was born in San Francisco and grew up on the waterfront of Oakland. In his early days he was an oyster poacher and then a sailor. After a brief stint at Berkeley, he went to the Yukon to try to strike it rich in the gold rush. The film gets all that, although it gives it a kind of boy-adventure haze.

After that, though, it departs from reality. It has him going off to the Boer War to be a war correspondent, which never happened. Although it showcases his marriage to Charmian Kittredge (Susan Hayward), probably since it is her book that the film is based on, it ignores his first marriage. It is also largely ignores his socialism and interest in unions and the poor.

Instead, the last third focuses on his experiences as a war correspondent during the Russo-Japanese War. One poster for the film features the inflammatory tag line "He was the first prisoner of the Japs!" The Japanese are depicted in purely racist overtones, with one prescient captain revealing to London the nation's long-term plans of conquering England and the U.S. Certainly the Japanese have blood on their hands when it comes to war atrocities, but I wouldn't expect a film about Jack London to end up as boo-hiss movie about the evils of Japan.

Starring as London is the completely charmless Michael O'Shea, who I can't say I've ever seen in a film. It was directed by Alfred Santell, who has a long history from silents to the late '40s, but as far as I can tell this is his only film on DVD. Kids, if you have to do a report on Jack London, do some reading, don't base it on this. You'll flunk.