Thunder Afloat (1939)
THE SCREEN; Wallace Beery Sinks a Submarine in 'Thunder Afloat' at the Capitol.
By Frank S. Nugent
Published: October 13, 1939
Metro's contribution to the Capitol yesterday was "Thunder Afloat," or "How Wallace Beery Avenged the Sinking of the Tugboat Susan H." It is an amiably preposterous melodrama, played in a double chord of low comedy and high courage, bearing a dedication to the United States Naval Reserve and a general resemblance to the things Mack Sennett used to do. Curiously enough, most of it is based on fact; not that part of it, naturally, dealing with Mr. Beery's one-man war against the German Navy. Metro's conscience must have troubled it a bit on that score. For, after its history-recalling preface about the German submarine raids on the Atlantic coast in 1918, it hastily recants with the familiar apology: "The events and characters depicted in this photoplay are fictitious."
A U-boat's sinking of the barge Perth Amboy soon after the United States entered the last war provided Ralph Wheelwright, MGM press agent, with his script inspiration; Mr. Beery's established cinema connection with tugboats suggested the next step; the rest of it is improvisation and Providence, the latter in the shape of the United States Navy which helped recommission a fleet of the old subchasers and let Metro's cameras watch them springing off their depth bombs. Mr. Beery may be thunder afloat; at least, as the enraged tugboat skipper floundering through navy discipline in quest of his sub, he more than displaces his weight in slapstick, but exploding depth charges speak with greater authority. They're the picture's real thunder.
Some of the action shots of the splinter fleet are great, and there is one grand sequence (no matter if it was made in a studio tank) of a navy mystery schooner being blown out of the water by pointblank shell fire from a U-boat's deck guns. Ashore the film is less fortunate: Mr. Beery's court-martial, Virginia Grey's synthetic tears in synthetic moments of crisis, Chester Morris's assignment to speak a few kind words about the navy spirit (MGM's bread and butter note) are as dull as they are hollow. Taking one consideration with another, we rate it passing fair, several degrees below "Submarine Patrol," which treated the same branch of the service, one or two above some of the others we've seen.
THUNDER AFLOAT, screen play by Wells Root and Commander Harvey Haislip based on a story by Ralph Wheelwright and Commander Haislip; directed by George B. Seitz; produced by J. Walter Ruben for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Jon Thorson . . . . . Wallace Beery
"Rocky" Blake . . . . . Chester Morris
Susan Thorson . . . . . Virginia Grey
District Commander . . . . . Douglas Dumbrille
U-Boat Captain . . . . . Carl Esmond
"Cap' Finch . . . . . Clem Bevans
Milo . . . . . John Qualen
Ives . . . . . Regis Toomey
German U-Boat Officer . . . . . Henry Victor
Admiral Ross . . . . . Addison Richards
U-Boat Petty Officer . . . . . Hans Joby
Ensign Dyer . . . . . Henry Hunter
Admiral Girard . . . . . Jonathan Hale
