Joe Butterfly

{{Infobox film

| name = Joe Butterfly

| image = File:Joe Butterfly.jpg

| director = Jesse Hibbs

| producer = Aaron Rosenberg

| writer = Sy Gomberg
Jack Sher
Marion Hargrove

| based_on = play by Evan Wylie and Jack Ruge

| starring = Audie Murphy
Burgess Meredith
George Nader

| music =

| cinematography = Irving Glassberg

| editing = Milton Carruth

| studio = Universal Pictures

| distributor = Universal Pictures

| released = {{Film date|1957|5|29|New York City|1957|6|12|Los Angeles}}

| runtime = 90 minutes

| country = United States

| language = English

| gross = $1.3 million (US rentals)"Top Grosses of 1957", Variety, 8 January 1958: 30

}}

Joe Butterfly is a 1957 American comedy film directed by Jesse Hibbs starring Audie Murphy, George Nader and Keenan Wynn, with Burgess Meredith in the title role as a Japanese man.[http://www.audiemurphy.com/movies19.htm Joe Butterfly] at Audie Murphy Memorial Site The movie was action star Murphy's only outright comedy, and it suffered by comparison to the similar Teahouse of the August Moon, released seven months earlier.Gossett, Sue, The Films and Career of Audie Murphy, Empire Publishing, 1996, p. 82. The film was based on an unproduced play.Erickson, Hal Military Comedy Films: A Critical Survey and Filmography of Hollywood Releases Since 1918 McFarland, 30 Jul. 2012 p. 176

Plot

The film follows the staff of the Army weekly magazine Yank, who are among the first American troops in Tokyo after Japan's surrender. They are given the difficult task of producing an issue of the magazine in three days. Short on ideas and having to meet the deadline, they enter Japan's black market and come across con artist Joe Butterfly. Butterfly shows them the high life, letting them live in a mansion complete with beautiful girls.

Cast

Audie Murphy as Private John Woodley
George Nader as Sergeant Ed Kennedy
Keenan Wynn as Henry Hathaway
Keiko Shima as Chieko
Fred Clark as Colonel E. E. Fuller
John Agar as Sergeant Dick Mason
Charles McGraw as Sergeant Jim McNulty
Shinpei Shimazaki as a little boy
Reiko Higa as False Tokyo Rose
Tatsuo Saitō as father
Chizu Shimazaki as mother
Herbert Anderson as Major Ferguson
Eddie Firestone as Sergeant Oscar Hulick
Frank Chase as Chief Yeoman Saul Bernheim
Harold Goodwin as Colonel Hopper
Willard Willingham as a soldier
Burgess Meredith as Joe Butterfly

Production

Filming started July 1956. The movie was shot partly in Hong Kong and Japan as well as aboard the USS Los Angeles.{{Cite web|url=https://uss-la-ca135.org/2infohistory.html|title=USS LA CA-135 Information & History}}

At one stage the film was not going to be shown in Japan.{{cite magazine|magazine=Variety|title=Universal not to show 'Joe Butterfly'|url=https://archive.org/details/variety205-1957-02/page/n236/mode/1up?|date=27 February 1957|page=5}}

According to co-writer Sy Gomberg, Audie Murphy was extremely uncomfortable playing comedy. However, the movie was an enormous hit in Japan, in part because of the Japanese people's admiration for Murphy, and partly because of its sympathetic depiction of the Japanese.Don Graham, No Name on the Bullet: The Biography of Audie Murphy, Penguin, 1989 p 266-267 Following the film, Murphy brought home a 14-year-old Japanese girl who stayed with the Murphys and helped raise their children while she attended school in America.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article47248180 |title=QUIET HOME LIFE FOR STAR. |newspaper=The Australian Women's Weekly | date=22 May 1957 |accessdate=11 July 2012 |page=43 |publisher=National Library of Australia}}

The original choice for the title character was meant to be David Wayne who had appeared as Sakini in the stage production of Teahouse of the August Moon. When he was unavailable the role was taken by Burgess Meredith who also played Sakini on stage.Erickson, Hal Military Comedy Films: A Critical Survey and Filmography of Hollywood Releases Since 1918 McFarland, 30 Jul. 2012 p. 176