They Were Expendable (1945)
Synopsis
They Were Expendable is an American war film directed by John Ford and starring
Robert Montgomery, John Wayne, and Donna Reed. Based on the 1942 book by
William L. White, the film recounts the exploits of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron
Three, a PT boat unit defending the Philippines against Japa nese invasion during
the Battle of the Philippines (1941–1942) in World War II.
Background
During World War II the U.S. Navy stationed a motor torpedo boat squadron in
the Philippines from September 1941 to mid- April 1942. Composed of six boats
commanded by Lt. ( later Vice Admiral) John D. Bulkeley (1911–1996), MTB Squad-
ron 3 participated in the doomed defense of Bataan and Corregidor during the
Japa nese invasion of the Philippines (8 December 1941–8 May 1942); conducted
the evacuation of General Douglas MacArthur and other high- ranking officers from
Corregidor to Mindanao (11 March 1942); and destroyed numerous Japa nese ships
and planes in August 1942, for which Bulkeley was awarded the Medal of Honor.
Covering the exploits of MTB Squadron 3, journalist William L. White extensively
interviewed Bulkeley, Lt. Robert Kelly, and two other PT boat officers. He then
published their first- person accounts in They Were Expendable (1942), a best-
seller condensed in Reader’s Digest and chosen as a Book of the Month Club
se lection. Collaborating with the U.S. Navy to make a pro- war effort propaganda
movie, MGM acquired the film rights to They Were Expendable in July 1942, a
month after the decisive U.S. victory at Midway and two months before White’s
book was published. Frank “Spig” Wead, a disabled former U.S. Navy aviator
turned writer, was hired to work on a screen adaptation; producer Sidney Frank-
lin and staff screenwriters Jan Lustig and George Froeschel contributed revisions.
A draft script was completed by April 1943 but didn’t quite work because of the
inherently gloomy nature of the material (only 5 out of the 68 men in the real
squadron made it out of the Philippines alive). Bulkeley and his men were
undoubtedly heroic— good fodder for propaganda— but they had fought a futile
rearguard action against an enemy overwhelmingly more power ful, were ulti-
mately defeated, and were nearly wiped out: an implicit acknowl edgment that the
United States had been woefully unprepared in the Pacific and that its insistence
on defending the Philippines had been an ill- advised po liti cal gesture. Radio jour-
nalist/screenwriter Norman Corwin was then brought in, but also strug gled to