Saturday Island [Island of Desire] *** (1952, Linda Darnell, Tab Hunter, Donald Gray, John Laurie, Lloyd Lamble, Peter Butterworth) – Classic Movie Review 5,907

Tab Hunter recalled how well he got on with Linda Darnell on the 1952 film Saturday Island [Island of Desire]: ‘She was sweet, patient and helpful, befriending an inexperienced kid. She even threw a surprise party to celebrate my 20th birthday.’

In World War Two, dedicated US Military hospital-ship nurse Lieutenant Elizabeth Smythe (Linda Darnell) and brash young US marine Corporal Michael J ‘Chicken’ Dugan (Tab Hunter) find their wartime hospital boat hits a mine in the South Pacific.

But they are swept as sole survivors on to a desert island, where they find romance when they spend months alone, and then drama when they are joined by RAF flier William Peck (Donald Gray), the only crash survivor of a plane shot down near by the island. He also falls for Elizabeth.

Nurse Elizabeth has to amputate the arm of Peck (in real life Gray lost his arm in wartime fighting), and a complicated, troublesome three-way situation arises. The two men compete for Elizabeth’s affections.

[Spoiler alert] Hunter recalls: ‘The producers were banking on British audiences turning out in droves to watch a proper English gent – a national hero in fact – defeat a strapping young Yank in a battle for Linda Darnell.’

Donald Gray was indeed a war hero, commissioned into the King’s Own Scottish Borderers in 1941, becoming battalion education officer at Llanberis in North Wales. In 1944, he was injured by a German anti-tank shell in Caen, France, and his left arm was amputated.

Based on the Saturday Evening Post story Saturday Island by Hugh Brooke, co-writer/ director Stuart Heisler’s largely unbelievable, and too talky 1952 wartime romantic adventure yarn Saturday Island [Island of Desire] is very modestly performed, apart from by Darnell, who is surprisingly good in her first British film as Lieutenant Elizabeth Smythe. Nevertheless, Hunter recalls: ‘Our only concern was making it look believable, especially my fight scene with the one-armed Mr Gray and my love scenes with Linda.’

The lovely Technicolor photography by cinematographer Oswald Morris and Arthur Ibbetson is the film’s other main saving grace. And the 20-year-old Hunter is sweet and appealing in only his second film as Marine Corporal Michael J ‘Chicken’ Dugan (following The Lawless in 1950).

There is also a nice, mainly British, support cast – John Laurie, Peter Butterworth, Harold Ayer, Sheila Chong, Diana Decker, Hilda Fenemore, Peggy Hassard, Brenda Hogan, Lloyd Lamble, Michael Newell, MacDonald Parke, Russell Waters, John Benham, Katharine Blake, and Sam Kydd.

Despite the love triangle and several other characters in the film, Saturday Island [Island of Desire] is at heart a two-hander between Hunter and Darnell. It was a hit, taking $1.5 million in North America, boosting Hunter’s career.

Saturday Island [Island of Desire] was shot at Ocho Rios, St Ann, Jamaica, and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the US Naval Operating Base, and in the UK studio for interiors and special effects at Nettlefold Studios, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England.

Don Taylor was set to co-star, but the role went to Tab Hunter, who was recommended by his friend, the veteran character actor and casting agent Paul Guilfoyle, hired by director Stuart Heisler to look for a fresh face to play the young marine. Hunter was interviewed by Heisler, who asked him to take his shirt off, and by screen-writer Stephanie Nordli, whose eyes lit up when he walked in and said: ‘That’s the boy I want.’ He screen-tested at Goldwyn Studios on the following Saturday and by the Monday got his passport to go to Jamaica, where filming started on 1 July 1951 and lasted three months, followed by seven weeks in the studio in London. Hunter recalls: ‘I’d have done it all for free, but they were apparently going to pay me – $250 a week.’

Gray also played the popular one-armed detective, Mark Saber, on British TV in the Fifties. The show Mark Saber ran for 156 episodes from 1955 to 1961. But ‘proper English gent and national hero’ Donald Gray (born Eldred Owermann Tidbury, 3 March 1914 – 7 April 1978) was actually a South African actor, born on an ostrich farm in Cape Province, South Africa.

‘All-American boy’ and ‘strapping young Yank’ Tab Hunter was born Arthur Andrew Kelm in Manhattan, New York City, the son of Gertrude (née Gelien) and Charles Kelm. Kelm’s father was Jewish, and his mother was a Catholic German immigrant from Hamburg.

Island of Desire [Saturday Island] is directed by Stuart Heisler, runs 102 minutes, is made by Coronado Productions, is released by RKO Radio Pictures (1952) (UK) and United Artists (1952) (US), is written by Stuart Heisler (screen story) and Stephanie Nordli (screenplay), based on the Saturday Evening Post story Saturday Island by Hugh Brooke, is shot in Technicolor by Oswald Morris (cinematographer) and Arthur Ibbetson (camera operator), is produced by David E Rose and John R Sloan (associate producer), and is scored by William Alwyn, with Art Direction by John Howell.

Release date: 20 March 1952.

Hugh Brooke’s novel of Saturday Island was published in 1935. Producer David E Rose acquired the film rights and set up the project in England under Warner Bros’ Coronado Productions with the financial backing of RKO Pictures who distributed it in Britain. United Artists released it in America as Island of Desire.

Hunter fondly recalls in his autobiography Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star (2005) how well he got on with Darnell, who was enormously helpful to the untrained young actor: ‘She was sweet and patient and helpful, befriending an inexperienced kid. She even threw a surprise party to celebrate my twentieth birthday.’ Tab’s autobiography later became a film: Tab Hunter Confidential (2015).

The cast are Linda Darnell as Lieutenant Elizabeth Smythe, Tab Hunter as Marine Corporal Michael J ‘Chicken’ Dugan, Donald Gray as RAF Squadron Leader William Peck, John Laurie as Grimshaw, Sheila Chong as Tukua, Russell Waters as Dr Snyder, MacDonald Parke as Ship’s Captain, Michael Newell as Edie, Lloyd Lamble as Officer of the Watch, Peter Butterworth as Wounded Marine, Harold Ayer as Marine Sergeant, Diana Decker as Nurse Hilda Fenemore as Nurse, Joan Benham as Nurse, Brenda Hogan as Nurse, Katharine Blake as Nurse, and Sam Kydd as 4th Marine.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5,907

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