KINDLE EDITION

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REVIEW

(Cont.):
BETWEEN The Men (1950) and The Godfather (1972) Marlon Brando was arguably the brightest and most original star in movies. Heput method acting on the map and gave it respectability. Trevor Howard's involvement with Brando began one day when the director Carol Reed telephoned him to ask if playing Captain Bligh in a remake of Mutinyon the Bounty appealed to him and what changes he would make toCharles Laughton's 1935 portrayal.

Howard, who knew Laughton well, thought that Hollywood hadruined the story of the mutiny by trying to depict the conflict between Bligh and Fletcher Christian, the mutineers' leader, as a simple black-and-white struggle between good and evil. Bligh had been less evilthan portrayed by Laughton, and the real-life Christian, played byClark Gable, had been no saint.

Howard felt that there was sufficient meat in the true story to makefictionalization unnecessary. It could be dramatized for the screenwithout jettisoning the facts. Although he and Reed had no previousdiscussion of the subject, their views were similar. Howard thoughtnothing more about the conversation until Reed phoned him twomonths later with the news that the green light had been given, thatMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer would produce it and that the role of CaptainBligh was his. Howard was told that he was everyone's first choice forthe role, including Brando's, who would play Christian. Howard accepted immediately, elated at the thought of working again with Reed and for the first time with Brando. What he did not know at thetime was that, in order to attract the moody star, MGM had caved into several of Brando's demands which would stretch relationshipsbeyond breaking-point and send the production costs spiralling.

Desperate to repeat the success of its remake of Ben Hur (1959), which scooped up eight Oscars, the studio decided to film the exteriors in Tahiti where the Bounty collected its cargo and where the sunand the sand and the tropical vegetation would provide an authenticbackdrop. The cast and crew thus assembled on Tahiti in readiness forthe arrival of a full-size replica of the Bounty, built in Lunenburg, NovaScotia, at a cost of $700,000. Work began on the three-masted ship inFebruary 1960. It was as faithful a replica of the original as circumstances would allow, although additional space was needed for securingand moving the cameras during filming. The total height from thedeck to the top of the mainmast was 103 feet. More than 10,000 squarefeet of canvas was used for the sails. Severe weather delayed the delivery of large quantities of oak from New Jersey which were needed forthe planking.

Careful planning failed to avert costly delays and disappointments.From the beginning, one disaster followed another. The design modifications and extra weight (of a diesel engine, camera mounts and soon) seriously affected the buoyancy and steerability of the ship, whichmeant that it not only took longer than planned to reach the SouthSeas from Nova Scotia via the Panama Canal but that it almost capsizedseveral times and caught fire twice during the 7,327-mile voyage. Itfinally reached Tahiti on 4 December 1960, two months after the film'splanned starting date.

Tahiti is the largest of a group of islands known as the Society Islandgroup, which include Moorea and Bora Bora. Scenes were filmed onall three islands. The total population of Tahiti is around fifty thousand, more than half of whom live in the only town of any size on the island, Papeete, which became headquarters for the unit. The interiorof the island is rugged and beautiful, with lots of crags and peaks, palmtrees and plunging waterfalls, but hardly any inhabitants. The bulk ofthe population hugs the coastline.

The first scene that Reed filmed was the stone fishing sequence, inwhich hundreds of native women wade offshore and, beating the waterwith their hands, drive the fish towards their menfolk in canoes. Almostevery inhabitant of the island appeared in the shot, each of whom waspaid $10 a day. The eight hundred who used their canoes to catch the fish earned a further $ 10, and they were allowed to keep whatever they caught. The scene depicting the arrival of the Bounty at Matavaii Bay was filmed with more than six thousand Tahitians milling around onthe sea and on the shoreline. These scenes were not only spectacular to watch; they recreated the original event with uncanny accuracy.

The true story of the Bounty is well documented. It set sail fromSpithead in England on 23 December 1787 under orders to proceedto Otaheite (later renamed Tahiti) to collect breadfruit for transportto the West Indies. Early explorers such as Captain Cook had reportedthat breadfruit, the staple diet of the South Seas, produced strong,healthy islanders. Colonists in the British West Indies wanted an inexpensive, nourishing food for their African slaves, and they petitionedthe King, George III, to have it introduced to the colonies. The Bounty,under Captain Bligh, was commissioned to transport a cargo of youngbreadfruit samples to Jamaica, where they were to be replanted, grownto full size and harvested.

While passing through Endeavour Strait, off the island of Torfua, en route for Jamaica, the mutiny erupted. Its leader was FletcherChristian. The trigger was Bligh's curtailment of drinking water forhis crew, because the plants needed more of it than he had allowedfor. There was only so much to share around, and if the choice wasbetween saving the men or the cargo Bligh was under orders to safeguard the breadfruit first and foremost. Every drop of water had tobe rationed. Not surprisingly, the crew mutinied and seized controlof the ship.

Bligh and eighteen crew members who remained loyal to him wereset adrift in an open boat no more than twenty-three feet long. Theywere expected not to survive. But forty-one days later, against overwhelming odds, they waded ashore at Timor in the Dutch East Indies,having rowed a distance of 3,618 miles with the loss of only one life.And that man had not been lost at sea. He had been killed by hostilenatives on a small island after the boat had pulled up on the beach foran overnight rest.

In an effort to keep their whereabouts secret from the Admiralty, Christian and his followers left Tahiti and sailed 1,300 miles southwards to the uninhabited island of Pitcairn, which is only two mileslong and a mile wide. They burned the Bounty so that it could not beseen from a passing ship. The island became their home, and alsotheir prison, since they had destroyed their only means of getting awayfrom the island.

It was a story that lent itself to numerous interpretations. Brando disagreed with the slant British screenwriter Eric Ambler had put onthe story. He wanted something 'more meaningful'. Ambler endured the star's moody criticisms for several weeks and then quit. Withreplacement writers the same arguments persisted, and while this wasgoing on filming ground to a halt. Papeete became a transit camp forthe hundred-strong disgruntled unit, although it was generally feltthat being paid regularly for taking life easy was nothing to grumble about.

Reed was wary of upsetting Brando unnecessarily, but he wantedthe story told truthfully, and what emerged from Brando's daily tinkering with the script was a storyline that departed from the truth atseveral critical points. Reed was also annoyed at the ease with which Brando subverted the procession of screenwriters who displaced eachother with clockwork precision. Charles Lederer, for example, incorporated all Brando's impromptu mutterings into the script, whetheror not they made narrative sense. Mostly they did not. Between themthey turned Bligh into a one-dimensional bad guy, a scowling ogrebetter suited to a B-movie. The real-life Bligh was bull-headed andhad a notorious bad temper, but he was not a sadistic megalomaniac,and the sailors under his command, while treated harshly, suffered noworse than others in naval service during the eighteenth century. When Reed pointed this out Brando went into one of his prolonged sulks,and the atmosphere between them which had begun so promisingly took an abrupt nose-dive.

Howard and Richard Harris, who was playing a character called John Mills, promptly took Reed's side, and, gradually, a split emerged.It was not serious to begin with, but, as views became entrenched andprofessional pride entered the equation, the divisions widened. Onefaction comprised Brando, Lederer, the producer Aaron Rosenberg,a front office executive called J.J. Cohn and the cinematographer BobSurtees. The rival group that formed behind Reed included most ofthe British and Irish actors on the film. Howard promptly emerged astheir most articulate and respected spokesperson. He also had themost to lose among the British and Irish contingent if the film turnedout to be a flop.

While genuinely in awe of Brando's talent, this group were puzzledby his wilful conduct. He had hijacked the production and appearedaccountable to nobody. With a growing sense of helplessness Reed'ssupporters retreated to their favourite bar in Papeete, Quinn's, andbriefly contemplated a mutiny of their own.

Then, suddenly, a new problem swept in from the sea: heavy rain.Solid, unrelenting rain. In MGM's eagerness to get started, nobodyhad considered how bad the weather can be in the South Seas at theend of the year. Cloudbursts forced everyone to dash for cover, strongwinds put the small boats out of action and, at times, almost toppledthe replica of the Bounty where it rested, top-heavy, in shallow water.Illness was another delaying factor. One by one key members of theunit collapsed with dysentery and other debilitating tropical conditions. Finally, demoralized after four months of relative inactivity, andwith the bills mounting at the rate of $50,000 a day, the studio wasforced to switch production to Hollywood where the sound stages wereequipped and waiting.

Back in Hollywood Brando and Reed continued their disagreements. Rumours that a vast amount of money had been squanderedwith barely anything to show for it caused shares in MGM to plungeseveral points. Panic and gloom engulfed Culver City. The pressstopped believing it would be 'Ben Hur Part Two' and began callingit 'Cleopatra on Water'. Brando, of course, could not be sacked, but Reed had no safety-net. Before the director had unpacked his suitcasethe knives were out for him.

The head of production, Sol Siegel, accused Reed of mishandlingthe Tahitian shoot and insisted that every effort be made to catch upwith the original schedule. The director agreed but could not give Siegel a completion date. Siegel lost his temper at Reed's refusal toprovide the answers he wanted to hear.

'You have a hundred days tofinish the job,' said Siegel flatly.

Reed shook his head. 'I won't say "yes" because I know I can't do itin that time,' he said. 'One hundred and fifty days, maybe.'