Word: bligh
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...blasphemous heresy and explode the myth that Charles Laughton is infallibly the greatest living actor. For people are being lured in droves to witness his inane eccentricities in "Rembrandt", a passed of foolishness that passes as acting and rides by on the immortal representations of Henry VIII and Captain Bligh; and critics are apparently too stunned to realize that Laughton and Korda can fizzle. In the first place the story is a mere chronological biography possessing practically no dramatic force, and in the second place Laughton's magnificent voice is toned down for at least half the picture...
...want you to get me right from the start, and no misunderstandings. I'm no Captain Bligh. But I'm no harbour loafer either. I'm a man who's sailed the North Sea in 50 storms. . . . Who's looked death in the face many a time without hatting an eye. So you'll realise that I'm not sticking out my chest and bawling just because I've managed to get across from Grimsby to British Guiana in the Girl...
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...
Born to an old Cornish landowning family in 1754, Bligh went to sea at the age of 7, was sailing-master for Captain Cook at 22. On Cook's last voyage he acquitted himself well when that great explorer was killed by savages, had gained considerable reputation for his courage and swift decisions by 1787, when he was given command of the Bounty for her ill-fated voyage transporting breadfruit trees from the South Seas to the West Indies. Although Dr. Mackaness roundly insists that Bligh was considerate of his men. quotes heretofore unpublished material to prove it, trouble...
...most readers, Bligh's story ends after he had been placed in an open boat with 18 men, "150 lb. of bread, 16 pieces of pork, each weighing 2 lb., 6 quarts of rum, 6 bottles of wine ... 28 gallons of water" and set adrift. Actually his career was only beginning when he reached the island of Timor 41 days later. A popular hero on his return to London, after "a voyage of the most extraordinary nature that ever happened in the world," he sailed again to the South Seas, fought in the battle of Camperdown, was driven...