Mickey Rooney Week: Captain Courageous

Hiya kids and welcome back for Day 2 of Mickey Rooney Week.  I thought I would bring us back a bit yet again.  Very few actors have a career spanning more than 7 decades worth.  From child star of the silent films to voice work for The Fox and the Hound, Rooney has been in this racket for more years than few could survive.  How about a sea faring adventure?  Let's take a spoiled near-do-well and see if he can stay afloat. from the pages of acclaimed novelist Ruyard Kipling (The Jungle Book, The Man Who Would Be King, Baa Baa Black Shep and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi) This is Captain Courageous.

The good news boy, is we aren't cannibals.

Manuel Fidello: Wake up, Little Spoiler. Hey, wake up, wake up!  Somebody think you dead, they have celebrations.



This is the story of Harvey Cheyne (Freddie Bartholomew of Anna Karenina, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Lloyd's of London and The Town Went Wild), a spoiled brat that only wants his absent father's attention and approval so clearly one should misbehave and get thrown out of private boarding school.  Yeah that trick always works.  Burton Cheyne(Melvyn Douglas of The Vampire Bat, Woman in the Dark, Ninotchka, This Thing Called Love, Hud, Being There and The Changeling) takes the lad on one of his business trips via steam ship.   In a fit of arrogance and misbehavior, Harvey falls overboard in the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.

Saved and brought aboard the fishing vessel "We're Here" by Portuguese fisherman Manuel Fidello (Spencer Tracy of Dante's Inferno, Adam's Rib,  Judgment at Nuremberg, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner)  and takes him before Captain Disko (Lionel Barrymore of Brooding Eyes, The Temptress, Body and Soul, The Thirteenth Hour, You Can't Take It with You and Key Largo) who Harvey fails to convince has wealth and needs to get back to land.  Disko offers him a job to earn his wages back to mainland in 3 months.  Harvey quickly learns that his whining, conniving and temper tantrums will not get him his way and sets out to work for a living.

Not sure I like the title "Salty Dog".

He finds mentor ship in Manuel and a father figure that he never saw in his own father. Thankfully the Captain's son, Dan (Mickey Rooney of Killing Midnight, Boys Will Be Boys, The First of May, Chicken Soup for the Soul and Phantom of the Megaplex) is roughly his age and the two do have fun after work.
Will Harvey ever find his way back to his father and if so, would that life mean anything to him after the sweating and toiling of his new one?

Directed by Victor Fleming (Reckless, Test Pilot, The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde and Joan of Arc) this story does a bit of is now the cliche' backdrop at sea, rocking boat via rear projection shots and the Schufftan process (lens shot through plate glass at a 45 degree angle to provide depth) with floor and seat movement followed up with matte paintings of the area the imagination is captured well enough that the cast is at high sea.

You see son, big money is in oil, steel and land.  Look at these figures.