The Caine Mutiny (1954 film)
The Caine Mutiny is a 1954 American military trial film directed by Edward Dmytryk, produced by Stanley Kramer, and starring Humphrey Bogart, José Ferrer, Van Johnson, Robert Francis, and Fred MacMurray. It is based on Herman Wouk's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1951 novel of the same name. Set in the Pacific theatre of World War II, the film depicts the events on board a U.S. Navy destroyer-minesweeper and the subsequent court-martial of its executive officer for mutiny.
The Caine Mutiny
The Caine Mutiny
(1951 novel)
by Herman Wouk
- June 24, 1954 (New York City)
125 minutes
United States
English
$2 million[2]
$21.8 million[3]
The film was released by Columbia Pictures on June 24, 1954. It was well-received by critics and was the second highest-grossing film in the United States in 1954.[4] At the 27th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor for Humphrey Bogart. Edward Dmytryk was nominated for a Directors Guild of America Award.
Pre-production[edit]
Writing[edit]
Herman Wouk had already adapted his novel as a stage play, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, which premiered on Broadway in January 1954 and ran for more than a year. The play was directed by Charles Laughton and was a critical as well as a commercial success.[11] Wouk was initially selected to write the screenplay, but director Dmytryk was disatisfied with his draft. He replaced the novelist with Stanley Roberts, an experienced screenwriter. Roberts later quit the production after being told to cut the screenplay so the film could be kept to two hours. The 50 pages worth of cuts were made by Michael Blankfort, who received an "additional dialog" credit.[12]
The film differs from the novel, which focused on the Keith character, who became secondary in the film. The film instead focuses on Queeg.[11] Independent producer Stanley Kramer "mollified the Navy" by modifying the Queeg characterization to make him less of a madman, as portrayed by Wouk, and more a victim of battle fatigue.[13] Studios did not want to purchase the film rights to Wouk's novel until cooperation of the U.S. Navy was settled.[14] Kramer purchased the rights himself for an estimated $60,000 – $70,000. The Navy's reluctance to cooperate led to an unusually long pre-production period.
Casting and director[edit]
Stanley Kramer and Columbia Pictures intended to cast Humphrey Bogart as Philip Queeg. Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn knew that Bogart wanted the part and took advantage of that fact, and he was eventually able to force Bogart to settle for much less than his usual $200,000 salary. "This never happens to Cooper or Grant or Gable, but always to me", Bogart complained to his wife, Lauren Bacall.[12]
Van Johnson was loaned to Columbia by MGM, where he was under contract. Being cast as Maryk was a breakthrough for the actor, who felt that he had been in a "rut" by being typecast in light roles. During the filming of the scene off Oahu in which Maryk swims fully clothed to retrieve a line, his character is warned that there are sharks in the water; these sharks do not appear on camera, but the actor's life was saved when a real-life Navy rifleman shot one which was approaching.[13] Lee Marvin was cast as one of the sailors, not only for his acting, but also because of his knowledge of ships at sea. Marvin had served in the U.S. Marines from the beginning of American involvement in World War II through the Battle of Saipan in 1944, during which he was wounded. As a result, he became an unofficial technical advisor for the film.[12]
Before choosing Dmytryk for The Caine Mutiny, Kramer had hired the director for three low-budget films. Dmytryk had previously been blacklisted, and the success of the film helped revive his career.[15]
The Caine Mutiny would be the first feature role in Robert Francis's short four-film Hollywood career, as he was killed when the private plane he was piloting crashed shortly after takeoff from Burbank Airport in California on July 31, 1955.[16]
Production[edit]
Filming[edit]
Principal photography took place between June 3 and August 24, 1953 under the initial working title of Authority and Rebellion.[17]
In addition to the Pearl Harbor and San Francisco Bay Area locations, including the Caine steaming back and forth several times under the Golden Gate Bridge, the romantic subplot features scenes shot on location at Yosemite National Park.[18]
The USS Rodman, a Gleaves-class destroyer minesweeper, was one of the ships chosen to represent the USS Caine in the film. The Rodman had one less smokestack than the actual Clemson-class destroyers on which Wouk served, and had more anti-aircraft guns. Completed in 1941, she was a much more modern ship than the 1918-manufactured Clemson-class destroyer minesweepers had been. True to the theme of the novel, the actual minesweepers of Wouk's service, the Zane and the Southard, were both outdated ships by the time the film was made. The Zane was retired shortly after the war, and the Southard was scuttled in October 1945 after running aground in Okinawa with Wouk serving as Executive Officer. One of the primary inspirations for the book and the movie came from Wouk's experience as second in command of the Southard when she ran aground in Okinawa as a result of Typhoon Ida in September 1945.[19][20][21][22]
Columbia claimed that the film contained the longest continuous courtroom scene without a cut, running to 977 feet, surpassing a scene in The Life of Emile Zola.[23]
[edit]
The Navy was initially uncomfortable with both the portrayal of a mentally unbalanced man as the captain of one of its ships and the word "mutiny" in the film's title. After Stanley Roberts' shooting script was completed and approved by the Navy after 15 months of negotiations, the Department agreed to cooperate with Columbia Pictures by providing access to its ships, planes, combat boats, Pearl Harbor, the port of San Francisco, and Naval Station Treasure Island for filming. Dmytryk recalled in his memoir that after "noisy" protests from the Navy subsided, the film production received wholehearted cooperation.[15] This included the conversion of two soon to be decommissioned destroyer/destroyer minesweepers, USS Thompson (DD-627/DMS-38) and USS Doyle (DD-494/DMS-34), as facsimiles to portray the USS Caine.[24][25]
An epigraph appears on screen immediately following the opening credits that reads: "There has never been a mutiny in a ship of the United States Navy. The truths of this film lie not in its incidents, but in the way a few men meet the crisis of their lives."[12] In 1842, an incipient mutiny was quashed before it occurred on board the US Navy Brig USS Somers.[26]