Joe Butterfly
| Joe Butterfly | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Jesse Hibbs |
| Produced by | Aaron Rosenberg |
| Written by |
Sy Gomberg Jack Sher Marion Hargrove |
| Based on | play by Evan Wylie and Jack Ruge |
| Starring |
Audie Murphy Burgess Meredith George Nader |
| Music by | Joseph Gershenson (supervision) |
| Cinematography | Irving Glassberg |
| Edited by | Milton Carruth |
| Distributed by | Universal-International |
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Release date
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Running time
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90 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $1.3 million (US rentals) |
Joe Butterfly (1957) is an American comedy film directed by Jesse Hibbs for Universal-International and starring Audie Murphy, George Nader and Keenan Wynn, with Burgess Meredith in the title role as a Japanese man. 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.
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.
The movie was shot partly in Hong Kong and Japan. 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. 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.
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