If you have ever read Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, you need to put everything you remember from it firmly out of your head when watching this movie because it has very little to do with anything you'll see here, storywise. At least, as far as I remember it from when I read it like a decade ago. I remember it as being a really interesting first-hand account of life on a full-rigged ship that sails from Boston, around the Cape, to California, and then spends a lot of time describing life in California. There was also a lot of stuff about cowhides. Stacking cowhides, transporting cowhides, lowering cowhides over cliffs, restacking cowhides... there's not a single cowhide in evidence in this film.
Now, it is true that Dana's book brought the mistreatment of sailors to the attention of the general public and created so much sympathy for them that laws were made safeguarding their rights as human beings and so on. The movie gets that part right, anyway.
Mostly, though, this movie is an excuse to make a seafaring adventure story starring Alan Ladd, something exciting like the Clark Gable vehicle Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), which is also based on a book that tells a true story, interestingly.
Anyway, we start this picture with a little history and moralizing:
Ahhhh, brutal drudgery. Sounds like we're in for a good time!
Now, the fact that this is based on a book by Richard Henry Dana, and the fact that the little history lesson at the beginning talks about him rising up to champion the oppressed sailors, all makes it sound like this is going to be a movie about Richard Henry Dana. But he's not the hero. Because every movie needs a surprise, I guess.
Instead, the story centers around Charles Stewart (Alan Ladd), the spendthrift son of a wealthy shipowner who has no thought for anyone but himself and no plans beyond this evening. He's never worked a day in his life, and his biggest problem is making sure the points on his collar are perfectly matched.
When one of his father's ships returns to port, Stewart decides to celebrate by going slumming in a waterfront dive. He thinks the people there are quaint, harmless, and so very comically beneath him.
Imagine his surprise when he wakes up aboard that ship, far out to sea. He's been shanghaied, along with a bunch of other guys. Because very few people will willingly serve aboard that particular ship, which Stewart's father owns.
Well. Pampered sons of wealthy shipowners are not big fans of brutal drudgery, as you might imagine, so Stewart demands that the ship turn around and take him home, and be quick about it! However, Captain Thompson (Howard da Silva) believes that he is the Supreme Ruler when at sea. He orders Stewart to join the ship's company "before the mast," which means as a common seaman, not an officer.
In the fo'c'sl, or forecastle, which is the part of the ship in the front (ahead of the mast) where the common sailors live, Stewart meets Richard Henry Dana (Brian Donlevy), who came to see on a secret mission. Dana spends a lot of time writing down everything that happens. And he doesn't let anyone read what he's writing. But he befriends Stewart, in a way, and is the first person on the ship to be nice to him at all.
It's a treat to see Brian Donlevy as a good guy, at least for me. I grew up watching him play the villain in
Destry Rides Again (1939), and more recently in
The Virginian (1946), as well as playing a crook in
The Glass Key (1942) opposite Ladd. But he's very well suited to playing a straight-up good guy too, and I would not mind seeing him in more roles like this.
Barry Fitzgerald lends some comic relief as only Barry Fitzgerald could. He's crotchety and irascible and so loveable that it's amazing everyone around him doesn't just hug him in every scene. He's playing the ship's cook here, and another very nice guy.
William Bendix plays not such a nice guy, as an officer who obeys the captain's orders without a qualm... at least at first. He's pretty fond of administering punishment, and you start out thinking his character is another sadist like the one he played in The Glass Key, but he's got a good brain and heart to go with his fists here.
William Bendix and Alan Ladd were best friends for many, many years. Ladd used his star power to make sure his buddy got work on as many of his pictures as he could, which is why you see them together so, so often. (I've probably mentioned that before. Sorry if I'm starting to repeat myself in my old age.)
Now let's talk about Howard da Silva a little bit. Here's a versatile actor, folks. I've seen him play fumbling and quiet in
The Great Gatsby (1949); I've seen him play charming and sly in
The Blue Dahlia (1946). But here, he is nasty, cold, vicious, calculating, and horrible. Ugh, ugh, ugh.
Two Years Before the Mast is mostly famous for the scene where Alan Ladd is beaten for striking an officer. Justly so, because it's a very memorable scene, not so much because Ladd is shirtless (I mean, let's face it -- we see him shirtless in at least half his movies), but because he does a really fantastic job of portraying a guy who is scared of being beaten (he witnessed another man be punished early in the voyage), but defiantly holds his head up and accepts his punishment like a man.
He's got a stereotypical character arc, going from weak and foppish to bold and manly after learning to do real work in the real world but, because it's Ladd, we sympathize so much with him, we don't care that it's kind of a hackneyed arc.
Oh, and also, we have an entirely pointless romantic subplot concerning Maria Dominguez (Esther Fernandez), a passenger they pick up along the way and take to California with them.
She's really only here to give Ladd someone to smile at, someone to champion him, someone to give him a reason to flex those lovely biceps extra often...
Still, she's very pretty, and has some nice moments. And props to the company for getting an actual Mexian-American actress to play this Spanish-Mexican-American character.
Maria is very nice and visits Stewart when he's clapped in irons for attempting mutiny. She does help hammer home the idea of doing your duty and taking pains to help others instead of always looking out for your own interests and desires, so I guess her role isn't entirely pointless.
Oh, uh, yes, mutiny. Of course, mutiny. The crew is slowly dying of scurvy because Captain Thompson refuses to put in for fresh food because he is bent on setting a record for fastest time to California and back. There's a cabin boy (Darryl Hickman -- yup, none other than Dobie Gillis) who's dying faster than most, and the crew are all very concerned about him in particular because he's such a sweet kid. So Stewart decides to pull a one-man mutiny, and, well, I already spoiled how that ends up by showing you him in shackles, didn't I. Sorry? Maybe skip to below the shot of The End if you don't want anything else spoiled.
More mutiny happens later on, and Stewart must bid an earnest farewell to Maria. She's going to get married to some guy in California as soon as she lands, so, you know... it's been fun, but we know they'll never see each other again.
Anyway, the crew has to decide if they are going to sail off to some South Sea island and live like kings with the natives forever like the crew of the H.M.S. Bounty, or if they're going to be good Americans and go home again and stand trial. Thanks to Dana and Stewart, they probably stand a pretty good chance of being believed when they say the mutiny is justified. So they go home. But really, this picture is just here because Ladd spends the whole scene leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaning in that chummy way, and I couldn't leave it unmentioned.
Well, they get home, and Stewart reunites with his father, who likes him a lot better now that he's not a good-for-nothing anymore. Funny how that works. The shipowners try to repress Dana's book, but fail, and oh, woe is them -- they have to start treating sailors like human beings! Oh my!
All's well that ends well, and we're left with this gorgeous shot of the ship. I have a terrible weakness for full-rigged "tall ships," and the presence of this one, plus the presence of Ladd, means I do enjoy watching this film even though it's kind of haphazard and cliched. It's still a fun ride, and I'm glad the Universal Vault Series has released it :-)
Is this movie family friendly? Yup. The beating scenes would probably be too much for really little kids, and there are some '40s-style violent deaths, but that's it.
