Incontro a Bataan

With the title this film has, I was expecting the Noel Coward classic song to be somewhere in the background. Might have helped this film quite a lot.

It's not a bad film, but it's quite a let down from Honky Tonk which was the first Clark Gable-Lana Turner combination which incidentally is my favorite Clark Gable role. It would be another six years before Gable and Turner would be paired again and in this one, Homecoming, it was Turner's picture all the way. It's my favorite Lana Turner picture.

In Somewhere I'll Find You, brothers Gable and Robert Sterling are reporters who both fall for female reporter Lana Turner. Gable keeps trying to convince Sterling that Turner's not the girl for him, but he's quite insincere in saying he doesn't have ulterior motives.

Midway through the film the action shifts from New York City to the Far East in the days just before Pearl Harbor and the last part of the film is a rousing bit of patriotic bravado, letting those people in the Orient know that the United States suffered a knockdown, but far from a knockout.

Gable's final scene, a radio broadcast from Bataan must have been especially poignant for him. This film was the only one he did between Carole Lombard's death and his discharge from military service. When he said 'more will come' he meant quite literally he was coming also. He had in fact already enlisted in the army and would be serving in the Air Corps as a tail-gunner.

Robert Sterling was being showcased in this film as well. He was MGM's junior version of Robert Taylor. Of course his greatest success was with his wife Anne Jeffreys on television in Topper.

Patricia Dane has a small, but telling role as a girl Gable picks up on the rebound from Turner. She should have had a much bigger career than she did. In the battle scene with the Japanese on the beach, small roles were given to future MGM stalwart players Van Johnson and Keenan Wynn.

Somewhere I'll Find You is not as good as Honky Tonk or Homecoming, but it's still a well crafted piece of entertainment.