China Sky

Opening just as European World War II hostilities ended, and four months shy of the Japanese surrender, China Sky is a smaller-scaled but worthy entry in the annals of adaptations of the novels of Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner Pearl S. Buck (The Good Earth, Dragon Seed). Under regular Japanese bombardment, American doctors Gray Thompson (Randolph Scott) and Sara Durand (Ruth Warrick) run a beleaguered Chinese hospital in the strategic village of Wan LI. Newly returned from a fundraising trip home, Thompson delivers another explosive payload: his new society wife (Ellen Drew), who is unprepared for the rigors of war and jealously possessive of her husband. Adding to the tension and the internationality of the cast are Mexican-born Anthony Quinn as a Chinese guerrilla leader, Korean-American Philip Ahn as a staff doctor of shifting loyalties, and Hawaiian Richard Loo as a hospitalized Japanese colonel with treachery on his mind. The winds of war and the storm clouds of romance make China Sky absorbing entertainment.