Movie of the Week: Run Silent Run Deep (1958)

This week it is Run Silent Run Deep (1958).

Much like Somewhere I’ll Find You a few weeks ago, I realized when I sat down to watch this that I hadn’t seen it in a very long time and that I have only seen it twice. Reason being? I don’t much like it. It’s not that it’s bad movie, it’s certainly not. I suppose it is mainly that it is just not my cup of tea; I’ve actually never even formally reviewed it for the website.

Clark Gable is Commander Richardson, a steel-willed Navy captain whose submarine is sunk by the Japanese early in World War II. After a year strapped behind a desk, he jumps at the opportunity to command another submarine–much to the chagrin of Lieutenant Bledsoe (Burt Lancaster), who was set to take over the sub. The crew all sides with Bledsoe and resists Richardson’s authority. There is much uproar when the crew of the sub discovers that Richardson has gone off of their planned path to seek revenge on the Japanese sub that blew his up a year before.

Clark is not looking well here. It’s funny in the 1950’s, he flip flops between looking nice and handsome and looking rather sickly. He was suffering from some back problems during filming, was often tired and insisted on finishing his scenes by 5:00 every day. His horrible chain-smoking habit had decayed his dentures and the black spaces around them are rather distracting (spring for some new dentures, movie star!). The military-regulation haircut was of course necessary but is not doing him any favors at all; it’s two short and make his ears look exceptionally large.

As was the ongoing trend in the 1950’s, Clark’s wife is played by a pretty blonde (Mary LaRoche) nineteen years his junior. Not that we see much of his home life, just one brief scene of her fetching him lemonade while he’s spraying a tree in the front yard for bugs. Much like Command Decision, I feel like there is a human element lacking here with this war tale (although there is more human feeling here than Command Decision for sure).

Burt Lancaster’s production company Hecht-Hill-Lancaster produced the film, thus making the younger star Clark’s boss. Burt and Clark remained amicable during filming, except for an argument over one scene. Clark objected to a scene in which his character makes a rash decision that ends in disaster and because of this, Lancaster’s character takes over the sub. He thought it was not fitting to the character and didn’t like to play the sap. Despite producers’ protests that he had already approved the script with that scene in it, Clark wouldn’t budge. Finally, the script was changed so that instead Clark’s character was injured and unable to command the sub, leaving Lancaster in charge.

The supporting cast is pretty good, with a young Don Rickles making his film debut and a baby-faced Jack Warden (I always think of him as the grandpa in While You Were Sleeping)

The film was a moderate success but failed to meet expectations. By 1957, moviegoers were tired of World War II movies, as they had been bombarded with them for the past 17 years. Musicals and light comedies were booming, not submarine dramas.

Nutshell review here.