In Harm's Way is a 1965 American epic historical romantic war film produced and directed by Otto Preminger[2] 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.

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.

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 had 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 his cruiser, Torrey finds his way into a romance with a divorced Navy Nurse Corps lieutenant named Maggie Haynes, who tells him that his estranged son Jeremiah is now an ensign in the Naval Reserve.

A strained visit with Jeremiah brings Torrey in on a South Pacific island-hopping offensive codenamed "Skyhook", which is under command of the overly cautious and micro-managing Vice Admiral B.T.

On additional information from his roommate, intelligence officer Egan Powell, Torrey guesses that the aim of Skyhook is to capture a strategic island named Levu-Vana, whose central plain would make an ideal airfield for B-17 bomber squadrons.

He personally selects Paul Eddington to be his Chief of Staff, and infuriates Broderick by immediately planning and executing an operation to overrun Gavabutu, an island to be used as a staging base for the invasion of Levu-Vana.

As Torrey turns his attention to Levu-Vana, his attempts to secure more material and manpower are frustrated by General Douglas MacArthur's simultaneous and much larger campaign in the Solomon Islands.

As the truth is about to be revealed, Eddington – still a qualified aviator – commandeers a PBJ patrol bomber and flies solo on an unauthorized reconnaissance flight to locate elements of the Japanese fleet.

Severely injured at the height of the battle, Torrey is rescued by his flag lieutenant, William "Mac" McConnell, and is returned to Pearl Harbor aboard a hospital ship under Maggie's devoted care.

[6] One of many problems encountered during production was that at the time of the filming (mid and late 1964), very few ships then in active Navy service resembled their World War II configuration of two decades earlier.

For starters, it was the last big-budget, all-star Hollywood movie to be shot in black-and-white, and that gives the film a harder, sharper, more defined edge than it ever could have had if it had been photographed in color...Add to those virtues the unexpectedly lively pacing and stunning special effects...and In Harm's Way seems like a very fast-moving two and a half hours'.

[13] Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic wrote "Preminger's latest is simply one more overlong epic of the naval war against the Japanese, with conventional story lines, characters, resolution".