Friday, January 18 - Morning seminar.
The Bounty Trilogy
Moving towards the mid-Twentieth Century, storytelling about Hawaii and the South Pacific moves towards historical novels and the two other forms of media -- the screen and the stage.
Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall were American airplane pilots in WWI. After the war they wrote a book on the history of their squadron, which led to Harper's Magazine to commission them to write travel articles on the South Pacific.
They went to Tahiti, married local women, and began a career of writing together. Their most famous historical novels were Mutiny on the Bounty (1932), Men Against the Sea (1934), and Pitcairn's Island (1934).
The first novel was filmed by an Australian crew in 1933 as In the Wake of the Bounty with Errol Flynn, Charles Laughton, and Clark Gable starring. It was remade three times by Hollywood:
1935 Mutiny on the Bounty MGM with Laughton and Gable again.
1962 Mutiny on the Bounty MGM with Richard Harris and Marlon Brando
1984 The Bounty A British Production with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins
Our discussion will revolve around select episodes in the original novels. All the moves are worth seeing beforehand, preferably in chronological order.