High Barbaree ** (1947, Van Johnson, June Allyson, Thomas Mitchell, Marilyn Maxwell, Cameron Mitchell, Claude Jarman Jr, Henry Hull) – Classic Movie Review 6806

Although director Jack Conway’s 1947 MGM adventure is based on the story by the Mutiny on the Bounty authors Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, it is a drab desert island fantasy.

Van Johnson stars as crashed American navy pilot Alec Brooke, a downed flier in the Pacific War, who finds himself along with his wounded co-pilot Lieutenant Joe Moore (Cameron Mitchell) on the very same Shangri-La-like magical, fairy-tale island of High Barbaree described to him by his uncle, Captain Thad Vail (Thomas Mitchell), a teller of tall tales. Brooke and Moore are the only survivors of a bombing mission in the Pacific and are lost at sea on a plane they have managed to make seaworthy and float, awaiting rescue.

High Barbaree is sugary and sentimental, especially in the scenes where Johnson and June Allyson (as his sweetheart Nancy Frazer) go all slushy on each other, and it is not exciting or fantastical enough to work. Johnson is a nice but rather bland star, and so really is Allyson, though Thomas Mitchell’s exuberance helps to liven things up as Captain Thad Vail.

Also in the cast are Marilyn Maxwell, Cameron Mitchell, Claude Jarman Jr, Henry Hull as Dr William G Brooke, Geraldine Wall, Barbara Brown, Paul Harvey, Charles Evans, Stanley Andrews, Bruce Cowling, Jimmy Hunt, Milton Kibbee, Sam McDaniel, Ida Moore, Gigi Perreau, Lee Phelps, Larry Steers, William Tannen, Harry Tyler, Joan Wells, Frank Wilcox, Chill Wills and Harry Wilson.

High Barbaree is directed by Jack Conway, runs 91 minutes, is an MGM release, is written by Anne Morrison Chapin, Whitfield Cook and Cyril Hume, is shot in black and white by Sidney Wagner, is produced by Everett Riskin, is scored by Herbert Stothart, and designed by Cedric Gibbons and Gabriel Scognamillo.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6806

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com