Captains Courageous (1937)
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Captains Courageous (1937) Inform the rich brats of the world. At some point they're going to meet real salt of the earth folk who'll teach them the true meaning of life, or at least you might think so from the dozens and dozens of movies built around that theme. Perhaps the best is the 1937 Captains Courageous, based on Rudyard Kipling's novel, which earned Spencer Tracy his first Best Actor Oscar. The story couldn't be more simple: Freddie Bartholomew is Harvey, a spoiled tycoon's son, who always gets his way through buying, whining or simple lying. On a trip to Europe he falls off the luxury ship only to awaken aboard a small Gloucester fishing boat. Naturally Bartholomew immediately starts giving orders only to learn that he's not the boss here and in fact will have to wait until the fishermen finish their haul in another two or three months before he can contact his father. Faced with such unyielding circumstances Bartholomew has little choice but to find out more about Tracy and his life. Spencer Tracy had misgivings about playing Manuel, the fisherman. He was first approached while filming Libeled Lady (1936) and felt that the fisherman was too secondary to the boy's part to be of real interest. It took director Victor Fleming (Red Dust, 1932) and Tracy's wife to convince him to take the role. Tracy still had reservations about getting his hair curled (at the studio, Joan Crawford kidded him for looking like Harpo Marx) and having to sing. He was also uncertain about how to do the Portuguese accent before deciding to base it on a Yiddish accent from his old theatre days. Even after finishing Captains Courageous Tracy thought it was some of his "worst" work, at least until he began receiving critical praise and eventually an Oscar. (It also took his life in an unexpected direction: after seeing Captains Courageous Katharine Hepburn decided that she had to work with Tracy and started looking for an appropriate project. The two would later become one of Hollywood's most famous screen teams.) Over the years, critics have had a good deal of fun at Tracy's expense over this performance, mocking his variable accent but, really, who cares? Does anyone watch a movie like this to hear an accurate representation of Portuguese speech patterns? What matters is that Tracy is a vital, humane presence at the center of the film. Of course, Manuel stands at the heart of Kipling's ideological universe and the ideas here are not subtle ones. The urban world of modern capitalism is heartless and soulless; Harvey's father, while well-meaning, is so concerned with business that he has no time to be a real father. The boy knows nothing but money and status, and behaves accordingly. He learns how to connect with other people from simple fishermen who have no entanglements with the modern world, whose lives are dictated by the demands of their small community and the rhythms of nature. While Harvey is flailing about, rootless and unable to connect, Manuel is at peace, at one with the sea, with the creatures he makes his living catching and with his fellow fisherman. He is totally unintellectual, instinctive, and intensely and unpretentiously ethical. He produces art spontaneously, composing impromptu songs on his hurdy-gurdy, and he practices an untutored but deeply felt Christianity that connects him to the memory of his dead father. At one point, he reminds Harvey that some of Christ's apostles were fisherman and it becomes clear to the audience that Manuel is intended as a sort of Christ- figure, a means through which this fallen boy can redeem himself. Expressed in cold prose, these ideas seem simple, sentimental, and high-handedly moral, and at times the film comes off as oppressively earnest. But Tracy's Manuel is so humane and vigorous that it all seems forgivable, and the script eventually moves to an emotional climax. There's also something strange and interesting about the intensity of the relationship between Manuel and Harvey. The boy develops a lover's jealousy, growing uneasy when the fisherman talks about his relationships with women, declaring "I want to be with you" when the prospect of returning to land looms closer. As Leslie Fiedler famously writes in Love and Death in the American Novel, a central theme in American literature (which I think we can expand to contain an American adaptation of Kipling) is the desire of men to escape from the realm of women and domestic obligation; freedom can only be obtained in the company of other men, away from the demands of the modern world. Harvey's desperate attempt to "be with" Manuel is a rebellion against cutthroat capitalism, but could it also be a revolt against the distant but inevitable trap of marriage? Much of Captains Courageous was filmed in winter off the coast of California during a period when location shooting was uncommon. Hundreds of live fish were brought down from Alaska and many more frozen ones flown in from Boston. A real fishing boat was used, along with some other boats for background and authenticity. Tracy kept trying to take the helm of the boat when not filming, something that did not amuse the real captain who once had Tracy forcibly removed when a storm unexpectedly arose. Mickey Rooney (who appears in a supporting role) and Freddie Bartholomew spent a good part of each day being tutored in part of the boat that had been converted into a classroom. Some historians would probably argue that Captains Courageous is an example of a Depression-era entertainment that pleased crowds by asserting salt-of-the-earth values as opposed to the heartless capitalism of the rich. That interpretation may be a little simplistic, since audiences of the 1930s were not one- dimensionally opposed to the upper class; they also wanted films that allowed them to escape into the fantasy world of the wealthy (screwball comedy, anyone?). In any event, bringing the high-falutin' down to earth has always been a favorite sport of Americans in good times and bad, and Captains Courageous does so in an admirably humane, if maudlin, way. Notes From The Archives The opening title reads, "Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer presents Victor Fleming's Production of Rudyard Kipling's Captains Courageous." Reviews pointed out the fact that the character of "Harvey" was nineteen in Kipling's novel, but was changed to twelve in order to accommodate Freddie Bartholomew. According to pre-production news items in Daily Variety and Hollywood Reporter, backgrounds and exteriors for the film were shot on location in Port aux Basques, Newfoundland and Shelburne, Nova Scotia in Canada, and Gloucester, MA in October and November 1935. Principal photography was set to begin on September 14th, 1936, but due to the death of M-G- M production chief Irving Thalberg on September 13th, the production was delayed for several days. Additional location shooting was done by second unit crews in the Florida Keys and off the coast of Mazatlan, Mexico, where the storm scenes were filmed. In mid-January 1937, shooting was temporarily halted due to the slow recovery of director Victor Fleming after minor surgery. Jack Conway subsequently took over for Fleming until February 1st. Photographer Harold Rosson was briefly replaced by Harold Morzorati in early February, 1937 while Rosson was ill with the flu. Melvyn Douglas was borrowed from Columbia for the picture. The exterior of the building used for the Cheyne mansion at the beginning of the film is located on Washington, Blvd. in Culver City. The structure, which initially housed the offices of the Thomas H. Ince Corp., became the headquarters of Selznick- International, and also served as its corporate logo. A Hollywood Reporter news item on the Los Angeles premiere noted that, for the first time in Hollywood history, pickets dressed in evening clothes manned a picket line. Although not specifically stated in that news item, the protest was linked to strikes within the industry that began in early May. According to various front page news items in Hollywood Reporter from May 1st - 14th, a general, industry-wide strike was averted on May 12th or 13th, but some studios had not yet signed pertinent agreements. M-G-M apparently was one studio that had not yet signed. According to a news item in Motion Picture Daily on November 18th, 1938, Federal Judge Harry Hollzer awarded a $30,000 judgement against M-G-M to Mrs. Helen Gonmesen, the widow of Kristen Gonmesen, a seaman who was swept overboard in the Pacific Ocean during shooting. The suit was based on the contention that the ship used was unsafe and unseaworthy. Spencer Tracy won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, the first of two back-to-back awards. The second was for Boys Town (1938). Captains Courageous was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, and John Lee Mahin, Marc Connelly and Dale Van Every were nominated for the Best Screenplay award. According to a news item in Hollywood Reporter, Mahin did not accept his Oscar nominaton certificate until 1939 because, at the time of his nomination, he had been on the board of the Writer's Guild and there was a dispute between the Guild and the Academy about possible discrimination in the writer's branch award committee. Film Daily, the National Board of Review, and New York Times all named the picture one of the ten best films of the year. Captains Courageous was the first MGM film to be shown on television, in 1955.