Like other Hollywood war films made in the initial years of U.S. involvement in WWII, Action in the North Atlantic was regarded as a means of stirring patriotism and mobilizing the home front. The film tells the story of unsung heroes in the Merchant Marine who brave attacks by German bomber planes and U-boats to deliver vital supplies to the Allies.[6]New York Times movie reviewer Bosley Crowther wrote, "it's a good thing to have a picture which waves the flag for the merchant marine. Those boys are going through hell-and-high-water, as 'Action in the North Atlantic' shows."[7]
Plot
An American oil tanker, the SS Northern Star, commanded by Captain Steve Jarvis, is sunk in the North Atlantic Ocean by a German U-boat. Along with First Officer Joe Rossi, Jarvis boards a lifeboat with other crewmen, which is rammed and sunk by the U-boat that torpedoed their ship. The survivors are finally rescued after eleven days adrift on a balsa wood life raft.
During a brief interlude ashore, Steve spends time with his wife Sarah, while Joe meets and marries singer Pearl O'Neill. At the maritime union hall, the Northern Star survivors await assignment to a new ship, which turns out to be a brand new Liberty ship, the SS Seawitch, commanded by Jarvis, with Rossi once again his First Officer.[8]
The Seawitch, armed with anti-aircraft guns manned by trained Navy gunnery personnel, embarks with a convoy carrying supplies to the Soviet port of Murmansk. However, the convoy is forced to disperse when a wolfpack of U-boats torpedoes them one by one. The Seawitch, now on her own, takes successful evasive action, hiding out at the edge of the Arctic icepack to elude a U-boat hunting her.
After the U-boat breaks off its pursuit, the Seawitch lights her boilers again and heads for Murmansk. The Luftwaffe is called in to destroy the ship. German maritime patrol planes spot the Seawitch and attack it with bombs and machine guns. In the ensuing action, Captain Jarvis is seriously wounded, and eight members of the crew are killed. It is up to First Officer Rossi and the surviving members of the Seawitch to get her to port.
Meanwhile, the same U-boat returns to try to sink the Liberty ship. The submarine hits the ship with a torpedo, but Rossi fools the submarine captain by setting smoky fires on deck. This lures the captain into surfacing to finish off the wounded Seawitch with his deck gun. The Liberty ship, listing and damaged, maneuvers and rams the U-boat, sinking it with courageous action taken by all hands.[9]
Fires out but still holed, the damaged Seawitch continues to Murmansk, with its crew wondering if they can make it – which they do, thanks to a squadron of Soviet fighters escorting them.[10] In the end, Joe Rossi, looking at what's left of the convoy in port, worries about the challenges that await them on their trip home.
The movie concludes with an excerpt from a speech by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, paying tribute to the valor of America's Merchant Mariners and their important contribution to the war effort: "From the freedom-loving peoples of the United Nations to our merchant seaman on all the oceans goes our everlasting gratitude."[11]
The working title for the film was Heroes Without Uniforms. It was originally intended to be a two-reel documentary about the Merchant Marine. But as the war went on and more dramatic action footage became available, the project was changed to a feature film with Edward G. Robinson and George Raft cast in the starring roles.[1] When Robinson had to drop out to do Destroyer at Columbia Pictures, he was replaced by Raymond Massey. Similarly, Humphrey Bogart replaced Raft after the latter was assigned by Warner Bros. to Background to Danger.[13]
To add authenticity, the 23-year-old Richard Sullivan, one of two cadet survivors of a recent U-boat attack on a Merchant Marine vessel, was hired as a technical adviser on the film.[14] The screenplay by John Howard Lawson (with additional dialogue by A. I. Bezzerides and W. R. Burnett) was informed by Lawson's discussions with Merchant Marine seamen at the National Maritime Union (NMU) headquarters in San Pedro, California.[15]
Lawson, a future member of the blacklisted "Hollywood Ten", wrote about his clashes with studio executives over certain aspects of the film's political content:
One of the scenes which the Warner Brothers regarded as "controversial" showed the Union Hiring Hall, indicating the service rendered by the union and the pride the men take in their organization. Even the wearing of Union buttons was a matter of concern and some soul-searching by studio officials, who finally agreed that the buttons must be visible. However, the story could not be built around the lives and feelings of the seamen, because it was necessary to give major attention to the parts played by the two leading actors.[16][17]
Since war restrictions did not permit filming at sea, Action in the North Atlantic was shot entirely on Warner Bros. studio sound stages and back lots. The ships' sets were built in halves on two sound stages, with the burning and sinking of the oil tanker occurring on the studio's "Stage Nine".[1] Aerial sequences were filmed with models of German and Soviet aircraft intermixed with real war combat footage.[18] All dialogue involving non-Americans, notably between German officers, was uttered without subtitles in the speaker's native tongue, a rarity in films of that era.[19][20]
Director Lloyd Bacon's contract with Warner Bros. expired while production was still in progress. Jack L. Warner wanted to wait until the film was finished before entering discussions about a new contract, but Bacon was not willing to continue without one. Warner fired him and brought in Byron Haskin and Raoul Walsh to complete filming, which ran 45 days over schedule.[1][21]
In his autobiography, Raymond Massey recounted an anecdote that occurred during the shooting of the film. He and Humphrey Bogart were off-duty and somewhat intoxicated on martinis as they watched their stunt doubles performing dives off a burning ship. The two actors started betting as to which stunt man was braver, and eventually the stars themselves made the dive.[22]
Reception
When Action in the North Atlantic premiered in New York City, more than a dozen Merchant Mariners and several hundred U.S. sailors presented Jack Warner with the Merchant Marine Victory Flag. Henry J. Kaiser, the ship-building magnate, thought the film was such a morale booster that he wanted it shown to all his employees.[1]
In The New York Times, Bosley Crowther praised the film as a "tingling, informative picture which thoroughly lives up to its tag of "Action in the North Atlantic' ... some excellent performances help to hold the film together all the way. Raymond Massey and Humphrey Bogart are good and tough as the captain and first mate".[7]
In a one-hour Lux Radio Theatre broadcast on May 15, 1944, Raymond Massey and Julie Bishop reprised their roles while George Raft co-starred, replacing Bogart.[14]
Box office
According to Warner Bros., the film earned $2,144,000 domestically and $1,316,000 abroad.[3]
Warner Bros. paid compensation to journalist Helen Lawrenson after she alleged that some of the film's dialogue was plagiarized from two of her magazine articles about the Merchant Marine.[24]
Following the film's release, The Pittsburgh Courier reported that Bogart had lobbied unsuccessfully for a black Merchant Marine captain to appear in Action in the North Atlantic. He was quoted as saying, "In the world of the theatre or any other phase of American life, the color of a man's skin should have nothing to do with his rights in a land built upon the self-evident fact that all men are created equal."[25]
The warm portrayal in the film of America's Soviet allies became an awkward reminder during the Cold War, as TCM Programming Director Scott McGee notes:
in the postwar era of chilly American-Russian relations, parts of the film would prove to be an embarrassment to Warner Brothers, namely the climactic "tovarich" (comrade) scene, in which the heroic Bogart and his men are greeted by Russians cheering wildly. Bogart does not return in kind, prompting a crewman to ask why he remains silent. Bogart says, "I'm just thinking about the trip back." That line served a dual purpose. Indeed, the trip back home would be rough going, but it also implied that the comrade stuff is acceptable up to a certain point.[1]
In the ensuing decades, when Action in the North Atlantic was broadcast on American television, Bogart's line was often cut out of the film.[1]
^ abcWarner Bros financial information in The William Schaefer Ledger. See Appendix 1, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, (1995) 15:sup1, 1-31 p 23 DOI: 10.1080/01439689508604551
^Bessie, Alvah (1965). Inquisition in Eden. New York: The Macmillan Company. pp. 66–67. LCCN65-15558. Lawson's fellow screenwriter Alvah Bessie (another future member of the Hollywood Ten) contributed uncredited dialogue to the scenes when the Seawitch crew spot friendly Soviet planes in the sky and arrive at Murmansk.
^Lawson, John Howard (1964). Film: The Creative Process. New York: Hill and Wang. p. 141. LCCN64020101.
^Buhle, Paul; Wagner, Dave (2002). Radical Hollywood: The Untold Story Behind America's Favorite Movies. New York: The New Press. p. 234. ISBN978-1565847187. Buhle and Wagner state that the scene in the Union Hiring Hall "highlighted the real-life Communist-guided National Maritime Union's self-educated rank and file who understood perfectly the political meaning of the struggle against fascism."
^Lawrenson, Helen (1975). Stranger at the Party. Random House. pp. 228–229. ISBN978-0394489001. The two articles she cited were "Damn the Torpedoes" in Harpers (July 1942), and "They Keep 'Em Sailing" in Collier's (8 August 1942).
