PT 109

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During his war service, John F Kennedy's torpedo boat was blown in half by the Japanese. Towing a wounded shipmate for three miles by swimming with the man's life belt clamped between his teeth, JFK landed on an uninhabited Pacific island and was rescued some days later. This folkloric story was a natural for Hollywood and Cliff Robertson makes a fine pre-president, though the build-up to the incident is rather slow. But as a piece of hero worship and political propaganda, released just after the Cuban missile crisis, the movie is a fascinating relic from a less cynical age. Kennedy Island, as Tulagi is now called, is in the Solomons, though the film's location was Little Palm Island in Florida, now the site of a luxury hotel.