A Great Navy Film
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scott-269-715736 — 10 years ago(July 02, 2015 06:25 AM)
I also agree.
I suppose it helps that Richard McKenna was a career Navy machinist's mate who spent 2 years on a river gunboat. An excellent writer mixed with a Wise director and perfect actors for the parts leaves us with a great book to read and a equally great movie to watch. Everything in the movie looks and feels right for the time and the service.
The only downside is the movie wasn't long enough to include the whole book. -
scott-269-715736 — 10 years ago(July 03, 2015 06:56 AM)
An epic tale that become one of the best, or possibly the best, movie depictions of a book. I believe both Crenna and McQueen gave the best performances of their careers where it is easy to forget they are actors, not a gun boat captain and a machinist's mate. The entire cast did a great job. One of the few movies where I found the optional commentary very interesting from start to finish.
Since you seem interested in such information:
McKenna didn't join the Navy until 1931 and his gun boat tour ran from 1939-1941 aboard the USS Luzon which was long after the captured Spanish gun boats were decommissioned. From his own personal experience and the stories he likely heard about gun boats in 1926 he gave us an amazing fictional reality of the time. His USS San Pablo was based on the USS Villalobos which apparently did spend a great deal of time at the city of Changsha and was at the center of controversy when the Chinese sent a protest via the American Consul who seemed to agree with the protest.
McKenna wrote many things although his other works have become hard to find, but available for a price. The most popular was probably the collection of essays titled, "Left Handed Monkey Wrench." -
tugboatphil — 10 years ago(March 09, 2016 06:28 PM)
There is some video footage of life in the Asiatic Fleet on the website of USS Panay. That was one of our gunboats that was sunk by Japanese aircarft during the attack on Nanking. Some called it the first US battle of WWII.
www.usspanay.org/ -