In Harm's Way is a 1965 American epic war film produced and directed by Otto Preminger and starring John Wayne, Kirk Douglas and Patricia Neal, with a supporting cast featuring Henry Fonda in a lengthy cameo, Tom Tryon, Paula Prentiss, Stanley Holloway, Burgess Meredith, Brandon deWilde, Jill Haworth, Dana Andrews, and Franchot Tone. Produced with Panavision gear, it was one of the last black-and-white World War II epics, and Wayne's last black-and-white film. The screenplay was written by Wendell Mayes, based on the 1962 novel Harm's Way, by James Bassett. The film takes place as the U.S. involvement in World War II begins; it recounts the lives of several U.S. naval officers based in Hawaii and their wives or lovers. The title of the film comes from a quote from an American Revolutionary naval commander: The film presents a relatively unromantic and realistic picture of the American Navy and its officers from the night of December 6, 1941, through the first year of the U.S. involvement in World War II, complete with bureaucratic infighting among the senior officers and sometimes disreputable private acts by individuals. Its sprawling narrative is typical of Preminger's works in which he examined institutions and the people who run them, such as the American Congress and the Presidency in Advise & Consent, the Catholic Church in The Cardinal and the British Intelligence Service in The Human Factor. Plot U.S. Navy Captain Rockwell "Rock" Torrey is a divorced son of a career chief petty officer. A Naval Academy graduate and career officer himself, Torrey is removed from command of his heavy cruiser for boldly pursuing the enemy but then being torpedoed by a Japanese submarine shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Torrey's executive officer, Commander Paul Eddington, is a wayward sort of career officer who has resigned as a naval aviator and returned to the surface navy because of an unhappy marriage. His wife's numerous affairs and drunken escapades have become the talk of Honolulu, and her death during the Pearl Harbor attack – in the company of an Army Air Corps officer, with whom she just had a wild fling on a local beach – drives Eddington into a bar brawl, a stint in the brig, and exile in a hated land-based logistics command. After several months of desk duty ashore in Hawaii and recuperation from a broken arm he suffered in the attack on