SLAVE SHIP (1937)

Fascinating and appalling, this little known film* about a ‘cursed’ ship running human cargo in the fast declining slave trade of 1860 is essential, if unsettling viewing.  Upturning a long held belief that Hollywood always romanticized Southern slavery, even when trying to be truthful/sympathetic to the victims of ‘that peculiar institution,’ this outlier film offers nothing but horror upon horror in the bowels of a slave ship packed to the gills with product, the seething mass under constant lash by the ship’s repellent crew.  Warner Baxter, the not particularly reluctant captain, finally seeing the error of his ways when he falls for Elizabeth Allan once back home.  The abrupt switch to cooing meet-cute romance disastrous to the drama, totally unconnected in tone to the opening scenes, the schizophrenic storyline credited to William Faulkner (!) of all people, though obviously much rewritten by Darryl F. Zanuck favorite, Lamar Trotti and comedy tweaker Sam Hellman.  (Someone must have written the drunken ship’s cook gags for Francis Ford.)  Back on board with his new wife, Baxter finds first-mate Wallace Beery ignored his orders and kept the old crew who are now forcing him to make a dangerous (if highly profitable) final slave run; even cabin boy Mickey Rooney on the wrong side of things.  It’s all mouth-gaping situations from then on out, as Baxter is left to die at the slave exchange, a fresh containment of slaves is shuttled aboard, and Baxter escapes to climb back on his ship and save the day.  And if some slaves wind up not getting drowned in the process, all the better!  Why this film, distasteful as it is, isn’t on the radar of current Black Studies is a mystery.  Perhaps the All White Man’s perspective is simply too much to swallow even with historical/period blinders on.  Not a single slave gets individual treatment.  But it seems too important a moment in popular culture to ignore . . . for those who can handle it.

DOUBLE-BILL: Baxter had just gone thru the Civil War as Dr. Sam Mudd, the man who unknowingly set John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg after the Lincoln assassination, in John Ford’s THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND/’36.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Was it withdrawn from circulation?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Very odd background score from Alfred Newman only occasionally matching up with events on screen.  ALSO: Keep an eye out for Mickey Rooney taking it on the chin, but for real, from Beery who was told off in no uncertain terms by director Tay Garnett who knew Beery’s nasty ways from helming him in CHINA SEAS/’35.