The Arcs, Adventure and Tradgedy of ‘Captains Courageous’

For the first 20 minutes of Captains Courageous, we’re thrust into the inner circle of a New York tycoon and his son, a boy so vile that the head butler calls him ‘it’. From the moment we meet Harvey Cheyne Jr. — played by Freddie Bartholomew — he’s bitter, seethes with jealousy and lies constantly. He demands validation from those around him, coveting loyalty from people he cares nothing about. Wanting to be admitted to an exclusive boarding school club, Harvey threatens another boy, telling him, “What if . . . he woke up one day and my father took away all the automobiles he had to sell and said: You’re fired.”

After getting himself kicked out of school, Harvey is remanded to the care of his father, who acknowledges that perhaps he’s failed his boy, but seems incapable of mustering enough effort to do anything about it. He takes Harvey with him on an ocean liner, which plows through a foggy sea, its horn bellowing.

Forever engaged in his one-upmanship, Harvey goes on an ice cream soda bender. Drunk and sick from the gluttony (and trying to protect his fragile ego by not letting other boys see him get sick) Harvey stumbles onto deck, sneaks outside the rail, and falls into the ocean. Suddenly, we’re watching a different movie. Harvey has literally fallen out of the world he ruled and into another.

Manuel Fidello — played by a young, curly haired Spencer Tracy — is at once the antithesis of Harvey. He’s kind, sincere, and we cannot help but adore him immediately. The perpetually wisecracking Manuel plucks Harvey out of the ocean and into his dory, calling him his ‘little fish’.

Unshaken by his fall and still driven by instinct, Harvey tries to bark orders and throw his father’s money around at the crew of We’re Here, a Gloucester fishing schooner. Captain Desko — played by Lionel Barrymore — humors the boy for a time, before resigning himself to the fact that ‘there’s nothing left to do’, smacking Harvey, who is eventually placed in the care of Manuel.

While reticent, Manuel takes the boy under his wing after Harvey pays his dues in the galley, and befriends Dan — played by Mickey Rooney — the son of the captain. Harvey and Manuel eventually fish together, but Harvey, still battling his instincts to scheme, sabotages the gear of another fisherman.

Manuel gives Harvey a cold shoulder, which is simply the last straw for the fragile, amoral boy. He’s forced to confess his crime, to build his integrity, and to win back the respect of Manuel, who has in every way become the father Harvey never had.

With her holds full, We’re Here races another schooner for Gloucester, pushing hard in a race for pride and bragging rights. A topsail is ready to burst its seams, and Manuel goes aloft to take in sail. But disaster strikes, the rig comes down, and Manuel is mortally wounded. He tells the cook in Portuguese that he’s maimed, and that he doesn’t want the boy to see. Harvey climbs onto the downed rig as the crew slowly chops it away, in what is one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the history of film.

“This is one of the very few films which is better than the book,” John Dukat, one of our readers, wrote us, referring to the novel of the same name by Rudyard Kipling. “One highly compelling scene is in the cockpit where Manuel talks about the sailor’s angel who looks out for you. This comforts me in rough weather. And if that isn’t enough, my brother, a merchant marine officer would show the film aboard ship. At the end there wasn’t a dry eye in the ward room.”

In 1937, New York Times film critic Frank S. Nugent wrote: “Interesting as the early sequences are, with their telling revelation of Harvey’s character, the picture does not really come alive until the cameras turn upon the We’re Here. Then, in its depiction of the men and methods of the old Gloucester fleet, it takes on almost the quality of a documentary film, enriched by poetic photography of schooners spanking along under full sail, of dories being lowered into a running sea, and shading in, quite deftly, the human portraits of the fishermen with their quiet heroism and resignation, their Down East humor, and their stern code of decency.”

Have you seen Captains Courageous recently? Please, tell us about it.