Adventure's End

ADVENTURE'S END (1937) is a very rare John Wayne film from the period before STAGECOACH (1939) before he was a major star. It is not "bad", but it is not a good film either. It was a Trem Carr production for Universal, so you know that the budget was pretty small. Still, for a movie that takes place almost entirely onboard a ship in the ocean, we see very few scenes actually shot on the water.

Wayne character is named "Duke" Slade (of course) and he's a pearl diver in the South Pacific or Caribbean (it's never really explained.). The local natives don't like him searching for pearls in their territory, so he decides that he will jump on a sailing schooner and work for his passage to New Bedford, Massachusetts. This does allow Wayne to spend most of the movie shirtless, so presumably his fans will be happy about that. His co-diver and companion is the teenage Kalo, who talks with an annoying Cockney accent, "Guvnor!". He is played by African-American actor Paul White. Kalo spends the entire movie blabbing to one character what another character is about to do, making the first character upset and forcing them to do something. If he had never boarded the ship it would have been a short and worry-free voyage.

Montague Love is unrecognizable as the ship's captain. He is dying and is worried that his ship will fall into the hands of his daughter's boyfriend, first mate Rand Husk (Moroni Olsen). Rand is at least twenty years older than her, and a bit indecisive. Seaman Blackie (Maurice Black) is stirring up a mutiny, as he wants to stay and search for pearls, which are much easier than hunting whales. Black easily gives the only convincing performance in the film. The captain's daughter Mary (Diana Gibson) is beautiful, but she really gives a wooden performance. The script doesn't help her though, as she is basically the prize (along with the ship) that most of the other characters fight over. The captain forces his daughter to marry Duke Wayne, I mean Duke Slade, to protect their family's ownership of the vessel, so it's a foregone conclusion a third of the way through the film that they will fall in love anyway by the end of the film. There is a lot of fighting and arguing, but you know how this film ends without me telling you.

I am convinced by watching this film that it was the talented writers around the 30 year old John Wayne that immortalized his career as the American cowboy. If you were to isolate his acting from the novelists, short story writers and screenplay writers that contributed to his career, you would have a clumsy looking, ungainly university drop-out who can't speak properly. This film is a classic example. It doesn't have the support of talented writers behind it, and so therefore, we are free to observe Wayne's acting rather than concentrate on the story. He lets you done by revealing his weakness as a thespian, but the industry was still kind to him by keeping him in regular work.