Friends, The Caine Mutiny is one of my favorite books and I sometimes see references to “The Caine Mutiny Court-martial.” What is this? A different novel? The trial excerpts from the book, a play? Is anyone familiar with other versions of the Caine Mutiny story?
It is both a play and a movie. With (as I go to my video rack and pull the box) Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg, Van Johnson as XO Maryk, Jose Ferrer as the Attorney (Lt. Greenwald) and Fred MacMurray as Lt. Keefer
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the movie but I believe the credits say something like “From ‘The Caine Mutiny Court Martial’ by Herman Wouk.”
Could the original idea have been a short story, then a novel, then the screenplay?
There was a filmed version of the play in the 1950s, before the movie, IIRC. IMDB should flush it out.
There was also a made-for-TV version in the late 80’s with Brad Davis as Queeg, and Eric Bogosian as Barney Greenwald, and directed by Robert Altman. I have never seen the original “Caine Mutiny Court Martial,” so I can’t compare it to the movie. However, I think I preferred the (Altman) “Mutiny” more than the filmed version with Bogey.
The novel was The Caine Mutiny, published in 1951. There was a play, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial in 1953. The original movie was The Caine Mutiny in 1954. The TV movie was The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial in 1988.
Herman Wouk’s novel version of “The Caine Mutiny” is told from the point of view of young Navy officer Willie Keith, a preppy Princeton grad. The novel covers his entrie service under Lt. Commander Queeg, the officers’ rebellion against Queeg, the Navy Court Martial of the mutineers, and the aftermath. There’s also a lot about Keith’s long-distance romance with a Jewish girl.
In the novel and the movie, the trial takes up only a small part of the action. Wouk apparently thought the issues raised by the trial deserved more thorough development, so he wrote a play, in which almost ALL of the action takes place at the trial. Barney Greenwald, the Navy lawyer played by Jose Ferrer in the movie, is the main character in the play, follwed by Steve Maryk, the junior officer who led the mutiny.
I saw the play on Broadway, twice. The first time, with Michael Moriarty as Queeg, John Rubinstein as Barney, and whats-his-name, Hoover from “Animal House” as Steve Maryk. Later, Moriarty shifted from Queeg to Barney, Philip Bosco was Queeg, and (I SWEAR TO GOD!) Joe Namath played Steve Maryk.
I had not red the book or seen the movie at the time I went to the play, and so I didn’t have any real preconceptions (oh, I’d heard a million jokes about “the strawberries,” but that’s about it). And IF you enter the play without preconceived notions, it’s very effective. If you see the movie, you KNOW by the time of the trial that Queeg is mentally unbalanced. If you read the book, you’ve seen plenty of evidence that Queeg deserved to be overthrown. But Wouk was aiming for ambiguity. And in the context of a trial, there’s PLENTY of ambiguity.
When ALL you know about Queeg is what his crew says about him, the audience has a dilemma. It’s NOT obvious at all, right away, that Queeg is crazy. Based solely on the testimony, a juror (or audience member) could reasonably conclude that Queeg MIGHT have been crazy… or he MIGHT just have been a typical, military by-the-book hard-ass who was only trying to impose discipline on a sloppily-run ship.
In the play, Queeg is a great role, because he leaves a lot of room for the actor to interpret motives. When Moriarty’s Queeg lost it on the witness stand, he was chilling and scary. You really began to get the creeps, and think, “this guy is a dangerous loony.” But when Bosco’s Queeg lost it on the stand, he became a very pitiable, sympathetic figure. You realized that he deserved to be relieved of command, but could feel sorry for him… he seemed like a decent man, in over his head, who was TRYING to impose discipline and command respect, but didn’t really know how.
Here is an earlier thread. It didn’t start out as a discussion on the “The Caine Mutiny,” but did end up providing some other comments on it.
Makes it a helluva lot easier to read:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=6678
Not that this is especially relevant or material to anything, but I don’t remember that the girlfriend (a nightclub singer named May Wynn) was Jewish.
May was a Catholic. Greenwald was Jewish.
I am not sure what Wouk intended with the resolution of the trial. Although Maryk was acquitted this was later overturned by the Navy in the book. The officers Keith, Keefer , etc., did gang up on Queeg but his freezing on the bridge, during the typhoon, endangered the ship and Maryk’s orders did in fact save it. As others have indicated the actions of the officers were ambiguous regarding their relieving of Queeg.
Well, what’s the consensus? Should Queeg have been relived? Did the “disloyalty” of the officers drive him over the edge? Was the Navy wrong in black-balling Maryk?
My parents saw the original Broadway play, and told me the staging was very effective. When the audience entered the auditorium, the curtain was already up and the courtroom furniture was all that was on-stage. Instead of raising the curtain to start the play, the bailiff character simply came out and did the “Oyez, oyez” stuff (or whatever the military does). The house lights were kept on throughout, just as if the audience were really watching a trial. Best of all, intermission was announced by the presiding officer character declaring a recess. Sorta wish I’d seen it.
Icerigger, I don’t think you’ll find a consensus. The power of the story comes from its complexity and ambiguity, IMHO, like most real-life situations. The more interesting question to me is how Wouk could have failed to write much else that was non-formulaic in his subsequent career.
Michael Caine did what???
Slight hijack maybe?
The book entitled The Caine Mutiny: A Novel of World War II, was written by H. Wouk in 1951 and published by Doubleday, is “probably based on that storm” [a typhoon which caused the loss of 250 aircraft, 4 destroyers, and 900 people died, because an admiral did not believe the (correct) forecast by his meteorologists]
Quoted and bracketed information taken from Typhoon Forecasting, 1944, or, The Making of a Cynic, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, October 2000, by Reid A. Bryson.
/sight hijack