# Bataan (1943 film)
**Bataan** is a 1943 American black-and-white war film directed by Tay Garnett for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, in which thirteen American soldiers volunteer for a suicidal rearguard action to destroy and hold a bridge on the Bataan peninsula and slow the Japanese advance in the Philippines.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216) • [2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/60072/bataan) It was released in the United States on June 3, 1943, while the war was still being fought, and it became a box-office hit and a template for the Hollywood combat film genre.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216) • [3](https://lastmovieoutpost.com/retro-review-bataan/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Release | June 3, 1943 (New York opening, week of June 3); MGM; black and white, about 114 minutes[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216) • [4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bataan/reviews) |
| Key credits | Directed by Tay Garnett; screenplay by Robert D. Andrews; produced by Irving Starr; cinematography by Sidney Wagner[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216) |
| Plot | Thirteen soldiers destroy a bridge on Bataan and hold the position against Japanese forces to buy time for the retreating army[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/60072/bataan) |
| Lead cast | Robert Taylor (Sgt. Bill Dane), George Murphy, Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Nolan, Robert Walker, Desi Arnaz, Kenneth Spencer[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216) |
| Production | Shot entirely on studio sets, November 30, 1942 to February 3, 1943[5](https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1066836) • [1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216) |
| Finances | Cost $958,000 and grossed $3,117,000[3](https://lastmovieoutpost.com/retro-review-bataan/) |
| Genre standing | Regarded by film historian Jeanine Basinger as the foundation of the World War II combat film genre[6](https://historynet.com/bataan-hollywoods-very-first-combat-film/) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
The Philippines, early 1942. American and Filipino forces are being driven out of Manila by the invading Japanese, and the retreat funnels down onto the Bataan peninsula[14](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cxt=filmography). Sergeant Bill Dane ([Robert Taylor](https://www.edgepedia.org/robert-taylor)) and Corporal Jake Feingold (Thomas Mitchell) are detailed to help Captain Henry Lassiter (Lee Bowman) blow a wooden bridge spanning a mountainous jungle ravine, the last crossing the retreating column needs. Ten more men join them, a ragtag squad: a pilot, Lieutenant Steve Bentley ([Barry Nelson](https://www.edgepedia.org/barry-nelson)), whose plane is wrecked; Corporal Barney Todd ([Lloyd Nolan](https://www.edgepedia.org/lloyd-nolan)) of the signal corps; young Leonard Purckett (Robert Walker), a Navy musician until recently; and a mix of infantrymen including Felix Ramirez (Desi Arnaz), Wesley Epps (Kenneth Spencer), and medic Jonny West (George Murphy).
The bridge is blown on schedule, but the orders say hold the ravine so the Japanese cannot repair it. The squad digs in on the cliff side of the gorge and settles into the waiting. Garnett lets the men talk, and the talk builds the film: Todd's wisecracking fatalism, Feingold's grizzled experience, Purckett's boyish letters home, Ramirez's prayers. The first Japanese probes come as sniping and night movement out of the black foliage. The casualties begin almost casually, a man simply not coming back from a listening post.
**The film's centerpiece is the siege itself, staged as a roll call of deaths that strips the squad down one man at a time until only Dane is left.** The Japanese stop sniping and start repairing the bridge at the far end of the ravine, and the men realize the only way to keep it down is to pick off the engineers and their guards from the cliff. The losses come sudden and inglorious: a bullet out of nowhere, a grenade, a bayonet in the dark. When Ramirez is mortally wounded, Arnaz plays his deathbed scene to the hilt, reciting the "Mea Culpa" prayer in Latin remembered from his Jesuit school days in Cuba; the moment registered so strongly with audiences that it won him a "Best of the Month" citation from Photoplay[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/60072/bataan). Epps carries wounded men down the cliff under fire. The medic works until his supplies are gone. Feingold dies of wounds and exhaustion. Each death takes a voice out of the dugout, and the silence grows.
The ending is the film's boldest stroke. Dane, the last man alive, digs his own marked grave, and fires back as the Japanese crawl through the ground fog and charge. He talks to himself, to the dead, to a phonograph recording of his own voice, keeping his nerve through sheer routine as Taylor plays it, quiet and unglamorous. For a 1943 morale picture to end on an image that close to a funeral was a genuinely bleak choice.
### Characters
Sergeant Bill Dane (Robert Taylor) is the patrol's spine, a man doing the arithmetic of his own survival and refusing to share the answer with the men who need his steadiness. The role scrapped Taylor's pretty-boy image and rebuilt him as a tough, heroic sergeant[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/60072/bataan).
Corporal Jake Feingold (Thomas Mitchell) is the grizzled veteran whose experience the others lean on, and he gives the ensemble its ballast until his own body gives out.
Corporal Barney Todd (Lloyd Nolan) has the sharpest tongue and the best lines in the film, a signalman with a soldier's fatalism who keeps the radio hope alive longer than anyone else.
Leonard Purckett (Robert Walker) is the naive young musician-turned-soldier whose death lands hardest because he is the one the audience has been allowed to like as a kid.
Lieutenant Steve Bentley (Barry Nelson) is the grounded pilot itching to fly again; Captain Lassiter (Lee Bowman) leads the demolition before falling early; Felix Ramirez ([Desi Arnaz](https://www.edgepedia.org/desi-arnaz)) and Wesley Epps (Kenneth Spencer) round out the squad, with Spencer playing a quiet, honorable Black soldier in a role that was groundbreaking for a studio picture of the era[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/60072/bataan).
### Interpretations and controversies
The film's integrated squad, with Black soldiers and a Filipino scout treated as full members of the unit rather than comic relief, was ahead of the studio norm, and it had consequences: the depiction of racial integration kept *Bataan* from being screened in parts of the American South where segregation laws were still enforced[15](https://hollywood-at-war.blogspot.com/2026/01/film-review-bataan-1943.html). The Japanese, meanwhile, are rendered almost entirely as offscreen menace and propaganda shorthand, which reflects the film's wartime moment more than any complexity.
## Production
MGM began discussing the project with the Office of War Information (OWI) in 1942, and the OWI, whose director Elmer Davis saw entertainment films as a way of reaching the public with government messages, urged the studio to make it.[5](https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1066836) The Bureau of Motion Pictures reviewed the script and praised the film for showing "a people's army fighting a people's war" and recommended an export license.[5](https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1066836)
The film's pedigree was openly derivative. In July 1942 MGM paid RKO $6,500 for the right to use any part of RKO's 1934 film *The Lost Patrol*, directed by [John Ford](https://www.edgepedia.org/john-ford), about a unit of British soldiers picked off one by one by unseen snipers in the desert; MGM executive producer Dore Schary later referred to *Bataan* as a "remake" of the Ford film.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216) Contemporary reviewers also noted the resemblance, along with the Russian film *The Thirteen* and *Sahara*.[7](https://letterboxd.com/film/bataan/reviews/) Working titles during production were *[Back to Bataan](https://www.edgepedia.org/back-to-bataan)*, *Bataan Patrol*, and *Bataan's Last Stand*; the title *Back to Bataan* was later used by RKO for a 1945 [John Wayne](https://www.edgepedia.org/john-wayne) film that AFI describes as a fact-based sequel.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216)
Shooting ran from November 30, 1942 to February 3, 1943, entirely on studio sets.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216) • [5](https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1066836) Garnett, who took a cut in his established salary to direct, built the jungle atmosphere with imported tropical foliage and produced ground fog by dropping dry ice into tubs of water and blowing the vapor with electric fans.[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/60072/bataan) The battle scenes relied on close-ups of bloodshed and hand-to-hand fighting, since air attacks and larger action had to be left to the imagination.[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/60072/bataan) • [3](https://lastmovieoutpost.com/retro-review-bataan/)
## Cast and the multi-ethnic patrol
Robert Taylor starred as Sergeant Bill Dane, the last survivor of the patrol, in a role one reviewer described as cast against type.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216) • [7](https://letterboxd.com/film/bataan/reviews/) The supporting cast included [George Murphy](https://www.edgepedia.org/george-murphy) as Lieut. Steve Bentley, Thomas Mitchell as Corp. Jake Feingold, Lloyd Nolan as Corp. Barney Todd, Lee Bowman as Capt. Henry Lassiter, Robert Walker as Leonard Purckett, Desi Arnaz as Felix Ramirez, Barry Nelson, Phillip Terry, Roque Espiritu, and Kenneth Spencer as Pvt. Wesley Eeps.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216)
**A deliberate casting statement.** This marked a deliberate casting statement: the film was the first World War II movie to feature a consciously multi-ethnic, multi-racial group of characters, an approach that later war pictures adopted frequently.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216) Producer Dore Schary, who wanted to break the color barrier in American war films, deliberately did not tell screenwriter Robert Andrews which character would be played by a black actor, so that the script would contain no race-conscious speeches.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216) • [2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/60072/bataan) The OWI approved the inclusion of the African American soldier but disapproved of the condescending way the Filipino soldiers were first drawn.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216) The casting was notable because the United States armed forces were still segregated during World War II.[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/60072/bataan)
The character of Wesley Eeps was reportedly inspired by Pvt. Robert H. Brooks, the first American soldier killed in the Philippines, for whom the parade grounds at [Fort Knox](https://www.edgepedia.org/fort-knox) were renamed.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216) The film also marked Desi Arnaz's first dramatic screen role, and his performance won him much praise; according to his autobiography, he suggested that his character recite the Latin confessional prayer *Mea culpa*, which he had learned as a boy in Cuba, as part of his death scene.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216) For Robert Walker, the role of Purckett was not his screen debut but his first significant part, and reviewers predicted he would be one of the finds of the year.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216)
## Reception and controversy
Critics of the day almost unanimously praised the film's "gritty realism," even though every frame was shot inside a studio using matte shots, rear projection, and artificial fog.[8](https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/translating-war-the-combat-film-genre-and-saving-private-ryan-october-1998/) Bosley Crowther of *The New York Times* wrote that the studio had not "prettified" the facts and that the picture showed war "in true and ugly detail," including "sickening filth and bloodshed."[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216) In May 1943 the film was pre-screened for soldiers, press correspondents, and dignitaries who had been on Bataan during the siege, and all approved of it.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216)
The integrated patrol caused trouble. The film had difficulty being shown in parts of the [Deep South](https://www.edgepedia.org/deep-south) in the 1940s.[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/60072/bataan) The NAACP took the opposite view: in June 1943 it awarded MGM a scroll of merit for the film's realism and for showing "how superfluous racial and religious problems are when common danger is faced," and in February 1944 its Junior Council gave the studio a special award for the sympathetic portrayal of a black soldier.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216)
Later assessments have been divided on other grounds. Some critics call it the first gritty, realistic portrayal of American combat in World War II, while others attack its staginess and stereotypes, and its anti-Japanese material is generally treated as dated wartime propaganda.[9](https://moviepalace.blogspot.com/2005/01/bataan-1943-there-is-no-critical.html) • [2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/60072/bataan) Time Out noted that a film acknowledging American setbacks in the Pacific still contrived to have its thirteen men wipe out "half the Japanese army" before being killed off, under a closing title reading "Their spirit will lead us back to Bataan."[10](https://www.timeout.com/movies/bataan) On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7.0/10 from about 3,000 users.[11](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035664/ratings/)
## Box office and legacy
The film cost $958,000 and returned $3,117,000 at the box office, a hit by the standards of the time.[3](https://lastmovieoutpost.com/retro-review-bataan/) It was nominated among the [American Film Institute](https://www.edgepedia.org/american-film-institute)'s 2001 list of 400 films for the top 100 Most Heart-Pounding American Movies.[3](https://lastmovieoutpost.com/retro-review-bataan/)
**Genre influence.** The film historian Jeanine Basinger argues that *Bataan* is the foundation of the combat film genre: later combat pictures from *[Sands of Iwo Jima](https://www.edgepedia.org/sands-of-iwo-jima)* (1949) to *Saving Private Ryan* (1998) owe it a debt, and its conventions now seem familiar precisely because the film assembled them first.[6](https://historynet.com/bataan-hollywoods-very-first-combat-film/) A 1998 American Historical Association essay by Basinger calls it the seminal World War II combat film, the first to pull together all the elements that became traditional to the genre, and attributes its realism less to its studio-bound visuals than to the genuine anger it carried after the fall of Bataan.[8](https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/translating-war-the-combat-film-genre-and-saving-private-ryan-october-1998/) Scholarly work identifies the film's most lasting invention as the symbolic platoon, a small unit drawn from different races, classes, and creeds, and credits it as one of the earliest screen examples of the multicultural combat team.[12](https://universityofleeds.github.io/philtaylorpapers/pmt/exhibits/2349/Kinney.pdf) • [13](https://www.weber.edu/wsuimages/weberjournal/pdf%202012%20prior/springsummer11.pdf) With the release of *Bataan*, the Philippine News Agency wrote, "the formula for World War II combat film was set in place."[5](https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1066836)
## References
1. [Bataan (1943), AFI Catalog of Feature Films](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=dbeddcf4-63e4-48c2-923b-8660f3a812f1&sr=0.80584216)
2. [Bataan, Turner Classic Movies article by Michael T. Toole](https://www.tcm.com/articles/60072/bataan)
3. [Retro Review: BATAAN, Last Movie Outpost](https://lastmovieoutpost.com/retro-review-bataan/)
4. [Bataan, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bataan/reviews)
5. [Bataan goes to Hollywood, Philippine News Agency](https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1066836)
6. ['Bataan': Hollywood's First Combat Film, by Mark Grimsley, HistoryNet](https://historynet.com/bataan-hollywoods-very-first-combat-film/)
7. [Reviews of Bataan (1943), Letterboxd](https://letterboxd.com/film/bataan/reviews/)
8. [Translating War: The Combat Film Genre and Saving Private Ryan, Perspectives on History, AHA (1998)](https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/translating-war-the-combat-film-genre-and-saving-private-ryan-october-1998/)
9. [Bataan (1943), Michael's Moviepalace](https://moviepalace.blogspot.com/2005/01/bataan-1943-there-is-no-critical.html)
10. [Bataan 1943 film review, Time Out](https://www.timeout.com/movies/bataan)
11. [Bataan (1943) Ratings, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035664/ratings/)
12. [The combat film genre exhibit, University of Leeds](https://universityofleeds.github.io/philtaylorpapers/pmt/exhibits/2349/Kinney.pdf)
13. [Film Focus, Weber State University journal](https://www.weber.edu/wsuimages/weberjournal/pdf%202012%20prior/springsummer11.pdf)
14. [https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cxt=filmography](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/13092-BATAAN?cxt=filmography)
15. [https://hollywood-at-war.blogspot.com/2026/01/film-review-bataan-1943.html](https://hollywood-at-war.blogspot.com/2026/01/film-review-bataan-1943.html)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › War and historical films (individual works) › War action and adventure › War action films released through 1999 › Released 1934 to 1962*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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