Ed-Shullivan I truly enjoy the old classic films and although the first 30 minutes of this film starts off a bit slower than I would have preferred director Victor Fleming certainly makes up for it with a classic tale of a young man's spiritual and mature growth during the remaining 87 minutes. The story features a young boy named Harvey Cheyne (Freddie Bartholomew) whose wealthy industrialist father Mr. Cheyne (Melvyn Douglas) spoils his young son with money and supplies his son with his own personal staff to allow Mr. Cheyne to focus on his business empire all the while his neglected son decides to take advantage of every situation. In many situations the young Harvey is bribing his way through life at such an early age in a way that most of us just could not fathom. The director has done a good job in showing us what can happen to a young man who is not receiving the proper guidance and little attention from his single parent.So young Harvey who is sailing on the high waters and again neglected by his father is not playing fairly with some other youngsters when he accidentally falls off of his father's ship and into the ocean without any life raft or rescue ring buoy. As he realizes he might drown a Portuguese sailor named Manuel (Spencer Tracy) scoops him out of the hands of death and brings him back on to a 20 man crew fishing vessel. Over the next few months at seas we see a very slow but gradual change in the way that the spoiled and bratty Harvey looks at life.You see, Harvey first gets a hard backhander slap directly across the side of his face from the ship's Captain Disko (Lionel Barrymore who is the great Uncle of current actress Drew Barrymore) for talking back to the captain inappropriately. Gradually as Harvey spends every waking moment on this smelly, slimy, wet fishing vessel with his savior Manuel as his only guide and conscious how he must behave amongst men of fishermen, Harvey has a transformation for the betterment of mankind. Harvey learns what team work, sacrifice, and hard work can do for a young man as he interacts with Manuel, Captain Disko and his son Dan (a 17 year old Mickey Rooney), and fellow seaman Long Jack (John Carradine) as they fish in the ocean and face the high seas and mother nature.This film is not all about a happy ending but more about life's hard lessons and reality that we can learn more about ourselves and who we really are by allowing others to show us the way, as our fathers and grandfathers, and mothers and grandmothers showed us. This is a memorable film not only for its time some 80 years ago, but the message this film still holds true today. "Life is not about who wins the race...but more about how memorable your journey was and who remembers you when you are gone.

russellalancampbell Freddy Bartholomew's turn as Harvey Cheyne is one of the truly great child performances. When at his boarding school and at his family home, he is everything we should detest and yet we see the potential good in him and rejoice at his transformation. He is transformed by the tough love of Manuel and the crew of the "We're Here". The scene where Captain Disco, inimitably played by Lionel Barrymore, wallops Harvey across the side of the head to stop his tirade against the crew is classic. Disco didn't really want to do it but there was nothing else left to do. Harvey learns to forgive and forget and get on with the business of fishing just as the crew does for him. Even the crew's gruff cynic, Long Jack, who has been skewered by hooks as a result of Harvey deliberately fouling his lines in order to help Manuel win a bet, finally offers Harvey Manuel's razor as a sign of respect for Harvey's genuine redemption as a valuable crew member.Harvey learns human values and to feel the thrill of working with others as equals with a common purpose. At first he scoffs the fact that all Manuel's father left him was a hurdy-gurdy and at the end of the voyage he values the hurdy-gurdy beyond measure as a memento of his now dead dory mate and mentor, Manuel. And the few dollars he earns as a crew member is valued beyond his father's millions. Freddy makes these things real for us and this is his gift.Lastly, I dare you not to cry when Harvey asks God to keep a place for him in Manuel's dory in heaven, even if you are not a believer.

secondtake Captains Courageous (1937)You might think this movie will come off as old-fashioned and stale, a old Kipling yarn filmed in the 1930s in black and white. Well don't pre-judge this! It's really good. Fast, energetic, touching, and filled with good acting and great filming. It even has a moral tale that doesn't smack you as sentimental, but is a good reminder of what counts in life.The main character is a rich boy who obviously needs to learn some lessons in humility and honor. And he's played with real perfection by the young English actor Freddie Bartholomew who had a five year heyday of great roles and great performances with classic adventure stories told on film. And there are parallels here of bigger tales like "Kidnapped" (1938) and "David Copperfield" (1935), with a child intersecting the world of adults and its perils. His adult friend is the bigger star, Spencer Tracy, who does a good job though I've never quite loved his style of acting. Here he plays a Portuguese sailor with a half an accent and it's the one problem in the film. Next to him in a big role is Lionel Barrymore, who recognizably makes for a quirky captain of the fishing boat. He's great. And so are the other side characters, including a whole slew of big names from the time (John Carradine and Mickey Rooney are probably most famous now). Much of the film is a low key adventure film. It's aimed at kids the way "The Wizard of Oz" is aimed at kids—meaning it's great for adults, too, and there are a few things snuck in to keep older viewers attuned. Director Victor Fleming went on to direct "Oz" and much of "Gone with the Wind" in two years, and you can feel his Hollywood expertise in every scene here. This is not a stiff 1930s movie if your head is in that mode. Fleming (with photographer great Harold Rosson, who shot "Oz" and a hundred others) makes it vivid and wondrous. The mix of studio shots and authentic sea footage (made with a second film crew in the North Atlantic) is brilliantly handled—no back projection goofs here.I really liked this movie. It's straight up filmic storytelling. No distractions, no bumbling. Give it a go and be surprised.

Shane Paterson This is one of those films I recall very fondly from my childhood (on TV in the '70s, I hasten to add, my having been born three decades too late to catch its original release) and now, after having watched it again for the first time in probably 30 or 35 or so years, I recall it just as fondly. It's a classic tale from Kipling, a potent mix of morality play and coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of a hazardous and hard-earned way to make a living. The fishing and sailing scenes are, as others have noted, very realistically presented and I see I am not alone in noticing that the actors were capable enough with their marine duties to make it look like they really WERE old hands at that sort of thing (something I noticed first with Mickey Rooney, who carried on his tasks with great efficiency, as if they were second nature, even while delivering dialog...his presence in the film is small but it's still a real standout).This film is loaded to the gunwales with talented actors, including some of the all-time greats. The incomparable Spencer Tracy, for example, is magnificent (and, yes, the scene where he faces down Carradine's character, with real menace suddenly supplanting his otherwise easy-going demeanor is a very powerful moment), and he here again proves why he is considered one of the very best actors to ever have worked in Hollywood. Lionel Barrymore is absolute perfection as the skipper, totally convincing in every detail. John Carradine, too, is 100% believable and a magnetic screen presence even by now. Melvyn Douglas, too, has captured a very nuanced and understated take on a character who is not in most of the picture but who is vital to its working. Every other actor in the ensemble delivers, too, just right.Young Freddie Bartholomew, of course, has the significant burden of basically carrying the film -- somewhat daunting even if your co-stars didn't include such as Tracy and Barrymore -- and he succeeds magnificently. He's utterly on target and convincing as the spoiled little brat who finally gets shaped into some sort of a better person, on the road to being a better man than he would have been had he not fallen off that ship. He's really a wonder in this film, perhaps one of the very best child actors ever. The depth of his hero-worship and love for Manuel, who he obviously contrasts to his more distant and workaholic father, is tangible and touching. He may be young still but, by the end, he's a man, or well on his way to being a real man, and not the kind of 'real man' who's some overbearing macho blowhard; he's had better examples than that aboard the schooner and his father's own journey, off-camera, suggests he'll do his best to be such an example. Manuel would have been very proud.