This week on “Picture Perfect,” taste the lash and prepare to be keelhauled! We’ll have music from movies featuring tyrannical sea captains.
Tyranny and sadism are common ingredients in nautical adventure films, where hard-bitten sea captains find it “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.”
At least that’s the mantra of Wolf Larsen, who does his best to uphold the philosophy of Milton’s Satan, in Jack London’s “The Sea Wolf” (1941). Larsen is a tough Norwegian sea captain who presides over his ship, the Ghost, with strength and brutality.
Edward G. Robinson plays Larsen. John Garfield is the working class seaman who opposes him. And Ida Lupino is the castaway with a past, with whom he falls in love in spite of himself. The score is by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who also provided the music for the seafaring adventures of Errol Flynn.
Captain Ahab requires little introduction. Everyone knows his ivory leg and his obsessive quest for the White Whale. Gregory Peck plays him in a film version of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” (1956), which was adapted by Ray Bradbury and directed by John Huston. The score is by English composer Philip Sainton.
Humphrey Bogart was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as Lieutenant Commander Phillip Francis Queeg, in a big screen adaptation of Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny” (1954). Queeg, in charge of a U.S. Navy destroyer-minesweeper, is pushed over the edge by his obsession with strawberries pilfered from the officers’ mess. Max Steiner’s upbeat, patriotic theme provides a nice counterpoint to the interpersonal turmoil aboard the Caine.
Finally, the most iconic of tyrannical sea captains, Captain Bligh, is represented by “Mutiny on the Bounty” (1962). Historical novelists Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall make hay from the 1789 insurrection aboard the HMS Bounty.
The classic film version from 1935 starred Charles Laughton as Bligh and Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian. The remake featured Trevor Howard as Bligh, with Marlon Brando, envisioning Christian as a kind of high seas dandy.
It’s said that Brando essentially directed all his own scenes himself. The film was colossal failure, earning back only $13 million of its $19 million budget. Nonetheless, it managed to inspire Bronislau Kaper to compose one of his most monumental scores.
Take a bucket of salt water with your stripes, you dog! Then join me for tyrannical sea captains on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
CAPTAINS OUTRAGEOUS (clockwise from left): Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab, Edward G. Robinson as Wolf Larsen, Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg, and Trevor Howard as Captain Bligh
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