Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951)

Film: Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951)
Stars: Gregory Peck, Virginia Mayo, Robert Beatty, Terence Morgan, James Robertson Justice, Christopher Lee
Director: Raoul Walsh
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Virginia Mayo-click here to learn more about Ms. Mayo (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Most people today would think of A Streetcar Named Desire and Strangers on a Train as the watershed moments for Warner Brothers in 1951.  After all, they were both critically-acclaimed hits, the former an Oscar behemoth still recalled today while the latter is considered one of the best Hitchcock films of its era (or any era).  But if you looked at Box Office receipts, no film could compare with this little-remembered Gregory Peck vehicle based off of the novels by CS Forester (weirdly enough, this isn't the best-remembered film based on a Forester novel from 1951, as he also wrote The African Queen).  Initially thought to star Errol Flynn, the former swashbuckler was worse-for-wear by 1951, and so Peck was cast; for his leading lady, he wanted Margaret Leighton, but she declined so Walsh went with one of his most frequent actresses, Virginia Mayo.  And since Mayo is our star of the month, I chanced upon Horatio Hornblower, one of the biggest hits of the 1950's.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on the first three novels by Forester (according to accounts I read while researching this article-I've unfortunately not yet read his books).  Hornblower (Peck) is a captain in King George's navy, and is currently on a mission to help arm a man who wants to steal the Americas away from the Spanish, with whom the English are at war.  Once he reached the island, after months at sea, he makes a pact with the madman of an island king (who basically fancies himself a god).  The man, who seems to despise Hornblower for not instantly worshipping him (there's a lot of problematic things about this particularly segment of the picture, a big part of which is because white actor Alec Mango is playing the role in brownface), convinces Hornblower to take down a Spanish ship so that he can use it to burn the Americas to the ground, but once Hornblower takes down the Spanish ship, it is revealed that the British and Spanish are now allies (oh what you wouldn't give for a cell phone in 1807), and thus Hornblower has essentially commit treason in trying to do right by his country.  He eventually destroys the ship with the island king on it, thus saving his own reputation.

This is the first 50 minutes or so of the film, and arguably the best 50 minutes of the film as Peck is a commanding presence who is aided by some pretty terrific effects during the ship battle sequences.  It's at this 50 minute marker that our Star of the Month shows up as Hornblower's love interest Lady Barbara.  It feels unkind to disparage our star so, but it's not entirely Mayo's fault that Lady Barbara feels like such a downer compared to the rest of the voyage.  It feels fairly certain that Forester's original novel had little interest in Lady Barbara as a character, instead focusing mostly on the adventures of the male protagonist, and it shows.  Mayo is a charming actress, and can play a character whose description basically could be "beautiful love interest" with ease, but considering how good she is in White Heat or The Best Years of Our Lives, it's a pity that one of her biggest hits basically has her there as an ornament.

Its disinterest in the female characters aside, this is a good action film.  I liked Peck, stoic & strong, in the lead even if he basically plays Hornblower as Superman.  There's some great costumes and while the dramatics of the romance never work, almost all of the action set-pieces do.  If this movie had been made today, it would have had endless sequels (wait, it was and it did-hi Ioan Gruffudd!), and it's a pity that Warner never made the same investment in Peck's career.  The film's ending feels a bit unearned (Mayo's Barbara has once again been absent for a huge swath of the film), but there's enough to recommend this picture for me to give it 3-stars.