9pm THREE CAME HOME Drama (1950) starring Claudette Colbert and Patric Knowles. Based on Agnes Newton Keith's bestselling 1947 memoir, this film tells Keith's harrowing true story of survival in a POW camp during World War II.
Agnes Keith (Claudette Colbert) and husband Harry (Patric Knowles) have lived in Borneo for years. Harry is a British officer, while Agnes has written a well-known book on the country. Their lives are disrupted when the Japanese invade in December 1941. With men sent to one prison camp, and women and children to another, the couple must survive apart despite cruel treatment by their captors. For three years, their physical stamina will be tested by malaria and sadistic prison wardens.
Three Came Home is a powerful film of unusual frankness and sensitivity that depicts some of the horrors of war that happen off the battlefield. In a letter written to the New York Times after the film's release, Agnes Newton Keith said, "I wrote Three Came Home for three reasons: For horror of war. I want others to shudder with me at it. For affection of my husband. When war nearly killed me, knowledge of our love kept me alive. And for a reminder to my son. I fought one war for him in prison camp. He survives because of me...The Japanese in Three Came Home are as war made them, not as God did, and the same is true of the rest of us."
