Ahoy and arrrrrrr, Matey! Here we have a grand swashbuckling tale with which to entertain ourselves this week. It’s not pirates, but rebellion! Not Johnny Depp, but Clark Gable (again). Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) garnered an unprecedented three Oscar nominations in the Best Actor category for Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, and Franchot Tone. This feat has yet to be duplicated in the Best Actor category, although it has occurred three times in the Best Supporting Actor category for the notable films On the Waterfront, The Godfather, and The Godfather II, and once in the Best Supporting Actress category for Tom Jones. It’s interesting to note that every time there was a triple nomination in an acting category, that film went on to win Best Picture. Hmmmm…thought provoking indeed.

Tensions rise on the Bounty

Anyhow, while I’m sure it was an honor just to be nominated, none of our buccaneers won the Best Actor award for this film (what are the odds!). Along with dominating the Best Actor category, the film also snagged nominations in five additional categories: Directing, Film Editing, Music (Scoring), Writing (Screenplay), and Outstanding Production. All those nominations and only one win for Outstanding Production, which places this film in the same boat as The Broadway Melody and Grand Hotel. (Just checking if anyone got my nautical pun!)

In my research for this week’s BP, I discovered a fascinating and pretty much overlooked historical movie figure. Her name was Margaret Booth. Her life spanned three centuries. And her story is so amazing that I feel I can’t really do it as much justice as I would like. In short, Booth was a film editor—you know, those people who ascend the Academy Award stage in small groups and quick all try to speak before the music cuts them off, while all the people with the famous faces that we know applaud mindlessly while waiting for the “more important” categories. Although she didn’t win for Mutiny on the Bounty, Booth was nominated in a category that nowadays is dominated by men. But back in the 1930s, editing was dominated by women, as the work was seen as tedious and menial—yet these women largely went uncredited and unrecognized. In 1978, at the age of 80, Booth was formally recognized for her decades of work in the film industry and awarded an honorary Oscar by the legendary Olivia de Havilland from Gone with the Wind. Four years later, Booth was still working as the supervising editor for Annie. For more on Margaret Booth and the women pioneers of the film industry, check out this study by Columbia University: https://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/essay/cutting-women/.

One other interesting note regarding Mutiny on the Bounty is that it is based on real events that began in 1787 when His Majesty’s Armed Vessel Bounty set sail from England, bound first for Tahiti to obtain breadfruit tree saplings and then for the West Indies to deliver the saplings as a cheap food source for the slaves on British Caribbean plantations. Just what exactly happened onboard the ship is a little unclear, but two weeks out from Tahiti a mutiny led by Master’s Mate Fletcher Christian did occur, and Captain William Bligh and 18 of his supporters were forced into the Bounty’s launch boat with only enough food and water for about five days. Miraculously, Bligh navigated his minimal crew 3,618 nautical miles in six weeks to the island of Timor in the Dutch East Indies. Christian and his fellow mutineers, meanwhile, sailed the Bounty back to Tahiti. Though some of the rebellious crew were later captured and taken back to Britain, Christian and a few other insurrectionists, along with 20 Tahitian men and women, settled on the island of Pitcairn, where about 50 of their descendants still live (as of 2015, when they were trying to recruit new settlers to the island—by the way, the government provides free land on which you can build your house overlooking the vast Pacific, in case anyone is interested). Norfolk Island also boasts descendants of Fletcher Christian and his crew, who relocated from the even more remote Pitcairn Island in 1856. In a hilarious twist of history, this small island, originally property of the British crown, came under Australian control just in 2015, to the regret of the island’s inhabitants who had been self-governing since 1979. What’s funny about this is that the Australian prime minister who headed the takeover of Norfolk Island, Malcolm Bligh Turnbull, was named in honor of Captain Bligh of the original Bounty. Though not an actual descendant of Bligh’s, one of Turnbull’s ancestors was an old ally of Captain Bligh’s and started a tradition of naming male Turnbulls after the infamous victim of mutiny. Revenge?

Yet another historical irony—this one tragic in nature—will close this post today. Another Bounty was constructed in 1962 for the remake of Mutiny on the Bounty starring Marlon Brando (yet another remake, simply called The Bounty, would appear in 1984, starring Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins). This same ship was used in Treasure Island (1990) and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006). In a heartbreaking catastrophe, this second Bounty sank off North Carolina when it sailed into the path of Hurricane Sandy on October 29, 2012. Two people were killed, the captain and a novice crew member named Claudene Christian, who claimed to be a descendant of the original Bounty’s infamous mutineer Fletcher Christian. You can read more about this disaster here: http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/12/us/hms-bounty-tall-ship-sinking-investigation/.

And, for more detailed thoughts on Mutiny on the Bounty and its significance, you can read the full post here this weekend!