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 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.'The Top Box-Office Hits of 1954', Variety Weekly, January 5, 1955 At the 27th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Bogart. Edward Dmytryk was nominated for a Directors Guild of America Award.
Plot During World War II, newly commissioned Ensign Willis Seward "Willie" Keith reports to the minesweeper USS Caine, where he meets career officer Lieutenant Stephen Maryk, the ship’s executive officer, and aspiring novelist and communications officer Lieutenant Thomas Keefer. Soon after, Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg is assigned command of the Caine. The eccentric Queeg imposes strict discipline on the lax crew, making him unpopular with them, but initially admired by Keith.
During a gunnery target towing exercise, Queeg is distracted berating Keith and Keefer over a crewman’s appearance, resulting in the ship steering over and cutting the towline, setting the target adrift. Queeg tries to cover up the incident.
Assigned to escort a group of landing craft during an invasion of a small Pacific island, Queeg abandons his mission before he reaches the designated departure point, and instead orders the dropping of a yellow dye marker, leaving the crew of the landing craft to fend for themselves. Queeg asks his officers for their support, but they remain silent and nickname him "Old Yellowstain", implying cowardice.
Believing Queeg to be paranoid, Keefer encourages Maryk to consider relieving Queeg on the basis of mental incapacity under Article 184 of Navy Regulations. Though Maryk angrily rejects that possibility, he does begin keeping a medical log documenting the captain's behavior.
Attempting to justify a strict need for discipline onboard, where even small infractions matter to maintain order, Queeg relates to his officers an account on a previous assignment where he received a commendation for an investigation to stop pilfering that involved stolen supplies of cheese. When a quart of strawberries go missing from the officers' mess, Queeg convenes an elaborate investigation to determine the culprit. Even though the mess stewards confess to having helped themselves to the missing portions, Queeg orders the berths searched and crew members strip searched. Convinced of Queeg's instability, trying to relive past “glory”, Keefer again urges Maryk to expose Queeg’s unfitness for duty. Maryk asks Keefer and Keith to go with him to report to Admiral Halsey about the matter. Arriving aboard Halsey's flagship, Keefer backs down, warning of the danger of accusing a captain, and they return to the ship.
At the height of a typhoon, Maryk urges the captain to reverse course into the wind and take on ballast, but Queeg refuses and virtually freezes up on the bridge. Supported by Keith, Maryk relieves Queeg of command under Article 184. The Caine returns to San Francisco, where Maryk and Keith face a court-martial for mutiny. Lieutenant Barney Greenwald, a temporarily grounded naval aviator and an attorney before entering the Navy, becomes Maryk's defense counsel.
At the court-martial, Keefer testifies that he never observed any mental illness in Queeg and was "flabbergasted" when Queeg was relieved. Later, when Queeg takes the stand, he exhibits odd behavior under Greenwald's relentless cross-examination, including his habit of rolling two steel balls in his hand manifesting his mental instability. Maryk is acquitted.
Following the acquittal, the officers of the Caine hold a party, where Keefer receives a frosty reception from Maryk. A drunken Greenwald arrives, remorseful about having had to expose Queeg to defend the wrongly accused Maryk instead of the man who should have been held accountable. He berates all the officers for not taking into account Queeg's long service and for failing to give Queeg the support he asked for, instead of deriding him as an incompetent. Greenwald claims their mistreatment of Queeg, who had been suffering from "battle fatigue" from his previous combat service in the Atlantic, caused the captain to become indecisive during the typhoon. He denounces Keefer as the real "author" of the mutiny, exposing to all present how Keefer disclaimed in his testimony his repeated unqualified "diagnosis" of Queeg's mental illness. Greenwald throws a glass of champagne, the "yellow wine", in Keefer's face. The rest of the officers walk out, leaving Keefer alone in the room.
Later married to his girlfriend, May Wynn, Keith is promoted to Lieutenant (junior grade), and assigned to a new Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer commanded by now-Commander De Vriess, his first captain on the Caine.
Cast
Pre-production Writing 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. Wouk was initially selected to write the screenplay, but director Dmytryk was dissatisfied 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.McGee, Scott "The Caine Mutiny" (TCM article)
The film differs from the novel, which focused on the Keith character, who became secondary in the film. The film instead focuses on Queeg. 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. Studios did not want to purchase the film rights to Wouk's novel until cooperation of the U.S. Navy was settled.TCM Notes 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 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.
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. 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.
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.
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.Osborne, Robert outro, TCM broadcast
Production
Filming Principal photography took place between June 3 and August 24, 1953 under the initial working title of Authority and Rebellion.TCM Overview: The Caine Mutiny, Turner Classics Movies (TCM)
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.
The , a destroyer minesweeper, was one of the ships chosen to represent the USS Caine in the film. The Rodman had two fewer smokestacks than the actual s 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 and the , 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.Description of the ship Southard in the typhoon in Wouk, Herman, The Caine Mutiny, (1953) Little, Brown and Company, Boston, New York, London, pp. 344–57 The Essex-class aircraft carrier was used in depicting the abortive visit to Admiral William F. Halsey Jr. aboard his unnamed flagship.
Columbia claimed the film contained the longest continuous courtroom scene without a cut, running to 977 feet, surpassing a scene in The Life of Emile Zola.
Navy involvement 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. This included the conversion of two soon to be decommissioned destroyer/destroyer minesweepers, and , as facsimiles to portray the USS Caine."Cinema: The Survivor", TIME Magazine, June 7, 1954USS THOMPSON (DD-627) Destroyers.org
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." In 1842, an incipient mutiny was quelled before it occurred on board the US Navy Brig USS Somers.Anthony, Irving. "Mutiny on the USS Somers", 17, no.1 Sea Classics (Jan. 1984): 18–22, 78–79.
Music This was the last of a number of Bogart films scored by composer Max Steiner, mostly for Warner Bros. The main title theme, The Caine Mutiny March, was included in RCA Victor's collection of classic Bogart film scores, recorded by Charles Gerhardt and the National Philharmonic Orchestra.The Caine Mutiny Music Credits IMDb
The lyrics of the song, "Yellowstain Blues", which mocked Queeg's perceived cowardice during the landing incident, were drawn from the source novel.Wouk, Herman. The Caine Mutiny
Soundtrack