Movie with stranded U.S. sailor in WW2 Pacific

Cafe Society
1

I think it came out in the 1960s or early 1970s. May have been Disney. I seem to recall the star was either Dick Van Dyke or Fred MacMurray, although I couldn’t find the movie in either of their IMDb.com listings. The stranded sailor becomes sort of like Robinson Crusoe, ingeniously arranging for food and shelter. There’s a scene in an abandoned Japanese submarine that he finds on the beach, I think. He has to dodge a Japanese patrol, maybe. In the end he gets rescued and wanders across the deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier, sort of stunned to be back among friends.

Sorry I only vaguely remember this film. Anyone know it?

2

I think it’s called Lt Robinson Crusoe USN with Dick Van Dyke. He also finds an Astro Chimp.

3

Lt. Robin Crusoe, USN? Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. (1966) - IMDb

4

The most useless post ever:
Nope, never heard of it.

5

Until I read the next post I thought you were pulling his leg. Yeesh.

6

Looks like that’s it. I guess the old abandoned Japanese sub had me thinking it was actually set during WW2. Many thanks!

7

Now that I think about it, I seem to remember seeing that when I was a youg lad at the movie theatre in dowtown Cuyahoga Falls.

Wasn’t there some tomfoolery with a firehose lifting Dick up into the air?

8

I actually read the novelization of this as a child.

9

Not that I remember. But I remember so very, very little about it.

10

You gonna be kau-kau for the sharks!

I saw this movie when I was a kid. Loved it, because it had an F-8 in the beginning. (Dad was in the Navy, and I spent a lot of my childhood at NAS Miramar.)

11

Isn’t there a Girl Friday who is quite violent and spends a good chunk of the movie trying to kill him? I also vaguely recall him trying to calculate his location and getting annoyed when he realizes his computed coordinates put him in Muncie, Indiana.

12

How was it? Did you read it before or after seeing the movie?

13

Didn’t it win the Pulizter that year?

14

Yep - remember as a kid noting the presence of extremely hot chick playing Friday role. Don’t recall her in anything else. IMDB search shows she was Nancy Kwan. I remember something about shark repellent, too.

15

My first memory of Nancy Kwan is her selling cosmetic cream in an informercial during the 1980s.

16

Hell in the Pacific?

17

Definitely not. In Winnipeg got it.

18

That was in Frank Miller’s graphic-novel version in the '80s. Turned out that he’d been set adrift by a post-apocalyptic government of muscular mutants with sharp teeth.

19

Remember, we’re talking about a Dick Van Dyke movie. Try to narrow it down a little, OK? Sheesh. :rolleyes:

20

I thought for sure this was going to be Father Goose.