The Long Voyage Home

I watched one of John Wayne's films that I have not seen. One of the oddities of Wayne's career was he did do a film based upon Eugene Oniels play. Unlike many authors who hate the film version of their work Oneil loved this version. You will see many familiar faces from John Wayne films. Ward Bond gets the meatier role as Yank and dies. John Qualen and Barry Fitzgerald are seen quickly. Qualen one again is playing a Scandanavian including multiple  " By Yimminy'. The star of the film is Thomas Mitchell who is seen in Stagecoach with Wayne. Ian Hunter plays a large role as a sailor trying to forget a misdeed at home.

The film was about the stark lives of broken men who passed their days as merchant marines. Oniel unlike modern communist authors understood that a playwright must never bore his audience or shriek at them. The story comes first and Oniel wrote about a subject he knew well life at sea. His works show the stark depessing world he knew well. One was familiar with this world from Two Years Before the Mast which is seldom read in school anymore.