Word: bligh
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...LIFE OF VICE-ADMIRAL WILLIAM BLIGH - George Mackaness - Farrar & Rinehart...
Most U. S. novel readers and cinemaddicts picture Vice-Admiral William Bligh, captain of H.M.S. Bounty, as a brave, cruel, stingy Briton who looked like Charles Laughton, lost his ship in a mutiny and steered a small open boat over 3,618 miles of unknown sea. But Bligh was a significant figure in the history of the British navy, with many distinctions besides his romantic misadventures...
Last week Dr. George Mackaness, professor at the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, offered U. S. readers a ponderous, highly-documented life of the vice-admiral that ran to 717 pages, seemed likely to fix Bligh's place in history for a long time to come. A partisan of his hero, Dr. Mackaness has had the advantage of new discoveries of Bligh's personal writing in drawing his portrait, studiously refutes writers who have charged Bligh with inhumanity and tyranny, but not those who have called him hot-tempered, tactless, shortsighted, rough...
Fired by the news of the Channel Fleet's feat, the North Sea Fleet at the Nore next tried to organize a strike of its own. Captain William Bligh, once of the Bounty, now of the Director, was one of the first officers to be put ashore. More aimless and violent than the Spithead mutiny, this "floating republic" made the mistake of threatening a Government that had just made all the concessions it felt like making. When the Admiralty tried to starve them out by cutting off their supplies, the mutineers retaliated by trying to blockade the Port...
Charles Laughton gives us Captain Bligh, an iron-willed flend running amuck at sea, where reason is powerless to restrain him. In spite of his round, boyish face, bestial cruelty disguised as lawful discipline seems to be Laughton's forte. This was demonstrated in "Les Miserables" as well as in the present picture. Those thick lips and pug nose of his are becoming the cinematic symbol of brutality...