Oceans Are Battlefields, Right?
A Roundabout Sally On The American Revolution & Navy in film, or lack thereof...
Some time in the 1970’s - probably after Star Wars and Steven Spielberg’s global success illuminated the future - Hollywood began making fewer heroic American history movies than it had since the film industry began.
There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but, proportionally speaking, our imaginative epics are now much more likely to be fantastical than historical.
I will write about this in more depth in the future, but the 244th anniversary of John Paul Jones’ defeat of the Serapis, which took place on September 23, 1779, focused me on the theme.
Specifically, why have I never seen a movie about John Paul Jones? After all, Jones is thought of as the father of the United States Navy. He is buried in a massive tomb at the Naval Academy. He is the guy who yelled, “Sir, I have not yet begun to fight!”
And, as we have seen from “Master And Commander”, ship based movies can work well. A small group of men battle the elements and face horrific death from ball and canister in order to keep safe all they love, defeat the frogs, take that Napoleon, etc, etc
It feels like there is a script in there somewhere worthy at least of a Netflix movie, right? Or a four part series on HBO MAX?
After a short bit of digging, I found that there is a 1959 movie, staring Robert Stack as Jones and Pete Cushing, better known as Grand Moff Tarkin, as the British Captain of the Serapis.
A Warner Brothers’ picture, it did not do well at the box office and was panned by critics. You can watch it here.
The movie, unsurprisingly, does not stand the test of time and few Americans could sit through it today. It does not help that Stack plays Jones exactly as he does Captain Rex Kramer in the Airplane! movies.
The movie’s history is mildly diverting. John Farrow, Mia’s father and Ronan’s grandfather directed the film, and it’s Mia’s first onscreen role in a bit part.
And it has Bette Davis as Catherine The Great at the end…
Farrow was the quintessential charming rogue, a poor Australian who had enough guile and knowledge of the sea to work his way into Hollywood pirate movies.
It seems he could tell a good story, making up a dramatic past about his time in the navy and roaming the world. He romanced his way around Hollywood and then became a devout Catholic after marrying Maureen O’Hara. He is buried in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, the resting place of all of Catholic Hollywood and Los Angeles old time royalty, such as Bing Crosby, John Ford, Conrad Hilton, Bela Lugosi, Walter O’Malley, Lawrence Welk and Sharon Tate.
(Also, Eddie Mannix is buried there. Josh Brolin played Mannix in Hail Caesar!, one of the best Cohen brothers movies. But I digress…)
As for John Paul Jones, he was born in Scotland and made his way to the colonies after a series of shady events, including killing a mutinous sailor, forced him to roam. Benjamin Franklin put him forward for command in the Continental Navy, and he sailed several ships against the British, including the Ranger.
In 1779, he commanded the Bonhomme Richard, a French ship given to the Americans and named in honor of Franklin, when he engaged the HMS Serapis and the HM Countess of Scarborough off of England. British victory seemed inevitable, but Jones prevailed.
He died in Paris in 1792, after serving in the Russian Navy after the end of the Revolution. Horace Porter, US Grant’s aide-de-camp in the Civil War, and the American ambassador to Paris at the time, paid for the archeological discovery and exhumation of Jones’ body from an abandoned cemetery. Theodore Roosevelt sent the USS Brooklyn to bring Jones’ body home to the United States, where it now rests in its tomb at the Naval Academy.
So, why not a John Paul Jones movie?