La vie aventureuse de Jack London

In his brief 40 years on Earth, author Jack London managed to cram as much adventure and incident as would seem possible. This 90-minute film, purportedly a biography of the man's life but patently fictionalized, doesn't even scratch the surface, and remains a story very ripe for a modern-day retelling. Here, Michael O'Shea, in one of his first roles, portrays London, and his performance is both rugged and sympathetic. He is not the problem here. Nor is a young and very beautiful Susan Hayward, playing his future wife, Charmian, whose biography on London is the "basis" for this film. London's life has here been broken down into a series of episodes, which the film skips lightly through. So we have brief incidents with London as an oyster pirate, a sealer in the Bering Sea, a gold prospector in the Yukon and a correspondent during the Russo-Japanese War...colorful events, for sure, but hardly given anything like in-depth treatment. And Alfred Santell's direction (he also directed one of Susan's first films, "Our Leading Citizen," in 1939) is lackadaisical at best. Making things rougher here is a very poor-quality DVD, with a crummy-looking print source and hissy sound. Perhaps the best thing about this movie rental, for me, was one of the DVD's extras: a catalog of all the Alpha Video films, featuring hundreds and hundreds of full-color movie posters. Let's just hope that these films are in better shape than "Jack London"!

Aside from the fact that the actor, Michael O'Shea, looked a lot like Jack London, there is nothing positive I can say about this monstrosity of a film. It purports to be a film about the life of London, but frankly it bears about as much similarity to his life as it does Foghorn Leghorn's or Lassie's! Plus, the real reason for this film is a thinly disguised anti-Japanese rant.

As far as London's life goes, aside from a few sketchy details, most of his life is unrecognizable in the film. In real life, he was married twice, ran about with prostitutes and died quite young--none of which are even alluded to in the film! Instead, it mostly fictionalizes his life up until he became a war correspondent during the Russo-Japanese War (shortly after the turn of the century). And, while London was really a correspondent at that time, the film is basically an anti-Japanese picture--taking the worst of London's experiences and adding a lot of 'we will one day rule the world' thrown in to boot. Now I DO understand why this was done--after all, the Japanese and US were fighting a war against each other in 1943. And, it was true that there were militaristic forces that felt exactly like the characters in the film--but the film was about 1903-1904--not 1943. And so, to make the Japanese look terrible, the film took many liberties. This is funny, as during the actual Russo-Japanese War, American sentiments were mostly pro-Japanese! The bottom line is that the film makers should have either made a real biography of London or they should have made an anti-Japanese propaganda film. Propaganda films have a positive place if done correctly and reasonably accurately (this IS possible and the US made many such films during the war). Because the film tries to be both, it does a terrible job of both--and completely sanitizes and obscures London's real life exploits (which WOULD make for a fascinating film) and comes off as preachy and fake. Bad propaganda and even worse history--even O'Shea's good acting and the presence of a young Susan Hayward could do nothing to overcome a crap script.

By the way, if you'd like to see a Japanese movie about a real life person that is filled with anti-American propaganda due to it being made during WWII, try watching Akira Kurosawa's film from his Judo series--"Sanshiro Sugata Part Two". While the film was set during the 1800s, an evil American was randomly thrown into the film to get beaten up by the hero of the story and to bolster anti-American sentiments in the audience! It manages to be even more superficial than "Jack London" in this regard.

Jack London's life was certainly colorful enough for a dozen films about different aspects of him. Sad to say though that what his life was used for in film was some wartime propaganda that put the best face on some of the least attractive parts of his character.

Jack London who barely saw the age of 40 when he died wrote some of the best stories around. He wrote on what he knew, but he also wrote as does everyone else bringing the baggage of his own life experience with him. Some of that experience in another day and time would have been condemned as racism. But this was World War II and London was a big believer in the 'yellow peril' as it was called back in the day.

Two thirds of the film covers his life as author, we see his years as a seaman from where he got the inspiration for The Sea Wolf. We see him up in the Yukon in a miner's cabin with a dog that was no doubt his inspiration for The Call of the Wild. London was able to capture the spirit of adventure that his own life was all about right on paper for the world to enjoy ever since.

The final third dealt with his time as a war correspondent covering the Russo-Japanese War. London was a socialist, but his socialism did not encompass folks who were Oriental. Like a few million others he saw the rising immigration of the Chinese and Japanese to our Pacific coast as a threat to jobs for the white people. He advocated strict immigration policies for Orientals.

The film puts the cart before the horse. London is presented as a man who saw because he was on hand at the Russo-Japanese War what Japan's ambitions were and for that reason was as xenophobic as he was. Actually the kind of atrocities present in World War II were not existent during the Russo-Japanese conflict. Japan had her imperial ambitions, but so did everyone else including the USA at that time. But our immigration policies caused by pressure from our West Coast politicians was a big contributing factor to the deterioration of relations with Japan over a couple of generations. London was part of the cause not a prophet crying in the wilderness.

This film was the first independent production of Samuel Bronston who later did some films with a bit more budget than Jack London. Had he a bit more money Bronston might have gotten James Cagney or Spencer Tracy, both who would have been right for the role. Instead they got Michael O'Shea who was making his second film after Lady of Burlesque. O'Shea is fine in the part, but certainly was no box office.

As London is covering the war, he meets up with a Captain Tanaka who is played by Leonard Strong, an actor who specialized in Orientals and played a ton of them in World War II. From the vantage point in 1905 Strong outlines in the best Fu Manchu tradition Japan's imperial aims right up to taking on the USA eventually. Must have gone over great with the swing shift crowd.

A lot of course is left out of London's life including a first wife. Playing the second and only wife in this film is Susan Hayward who only comes into the movie when it's half over. I wish we'd have seen more of her. Charmian Kittredge London survived her husband by almost 40 years dying in 1955.

O'Shea in fact met and married the leading lady of his life in Jack London. Virginia Mayo has a small role in Jack London and they married for 30 years until O'Shea died in 1973.

Maybe one day we'll get a view of Jack London that will be a lot better than this one.

For the first hour or so, this fictionalized biography of "Jack London" is not bad. Michael O'Shea brings some energy to the role, and in general it conveys some of the basic characteristics of its subject's life reasonably well. The last part of it was heavily tailored to the time in which it was filmed, and unfortunately it is now only of interest as an example of how badly a movie can become dated when it tries to do that.

Most of the movie is a collection of distinct experiences in London's life, tied loosely together. It works all right, and it effectively conveys the irregular nature of his lifestyle, with some courageous acts being mixed in with his involvement in disreputable and even illegal activities. The low budget nature of the production occasionally keeps some of these sequences from being more effective, but it's not bad, though it would have benefited from giving Susan Hayward and some of the other supporting cast members a little more to do.

In the last half hour or so, the story shifts its focus to a lengthy sequence that has London in Japan, reporting on the war between Japan and Russia in the early 20th century. The overt and sometimes forced condemnations of Japan make the sequence now look labored and a bit frantic, though in its time the message may have seemed to be appropriate.

There was surely a middle ground that would have allowed for brief wartime message to be inserted without getting things completely off-track. Many movies of the first half of the 1940s, in fact, do just that, and are able to hold up perfectly well today even when there are a handful of scenes or quotes that were clearly intended to have wartime significance. Jack London was a fine writer and an interesting person, but this movie ends up taking the focus too far away from him and from his life.

"Jack London" (1943) is a film that tells some of the life of author and news correspondent, Jack London(1876-1916). His work; fish cannery, fishing boat. Jack's adventures; Alaska gold rush, educational advances, etc. are somewhat documented, but not as well as I would have liked. The script dwells on the Japanese treatment of Jack London and Russian prisoners prior to WWI. There's true information on London there, but it could be more accurate. Much of it is weak and doesn't include his political stands.

Since this movie was scripted and filmed in 1943 (mid-WWII), we need to know it was a quickly made WWII film that showed what was going on during a before WWI time. I saw it referred to as 'Japanese bashing' but we must remember we were at war and the Japanese were using their own forms of propaganda for 'America bashing'; remember their famous cartoons and 'Tokyo Rose'. Whether we agree or disagree it is in the past.

And the director, Alfred Santell, and writers, Charmian London(book) and Isaac Don Levine(script) put together a movie that they hoped reflected the spirit of "Jack London".

Michael O'Shea (born: 1906) did a great job of portraying the part of Jack. He did 19 more movies and several TV roles passing away in 1973 of a heart attack.

But a true visual treat was seeing Susan Hayward in the role of Charmian Kittredge London. She added beauty and a fiery loyalty to Michael's temperamental Jack.

Susan (born: 1918) died in 1975 of brain cancer. Susan was a great actress and you can't help but wonder what she would have contributed to the movie world had she been able to continue on.