His Majesty O'Keefe

In 1870, the ambitious Captain David Dion O'Keefe (Burt Lancaster) leaves Hong Kong to seek the valuable copra in the South Seas. He pushes his crew too much and faces a mutiny. When the crew assumes the ship, they leave Captain O'Keefe in a small boat in the middle of nowhere. O'Keefe is found on the shore of the Island of Yap and is saved by the German agent from the company that has the monopoly in Yap, Alfred Tetins (Andre Morell), and the native Fatumak (Abraham Sofaer). When O'Keefe is recovered, he finds stranded in an island with a large quantity of coconuts and he sees the possibility of raising a fortune exploring the natural resource. However the natives do not like to work and O'Keefe returns to Hong Kong.

Captain O'Keefe tries to raise a loan to buy a new vessel, but he does not find any sponsor but the Chinese dentist Sien Tang (Philip Ahn) that offers his old vessel, crew and supplies to O'Keefe to become his partner and share his profits. O'Keefe accepts and begins his dangerous journey through the South Seas.

"His Majesty O'Keefe" is a silly adventure of an ambitious captain that seeks fortune in Micronesia and becomes a king without a crown. The plot has action, romance and drama and entertains but is dated and does not work well, despite the excellent Burt Lancaster in the lead role. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Sua Majestade o Aventureiro" ("His Majesty the Adventurer")

A deeply subversive, yet utterly enjoyable (and kinda true)South Seas movie from the 50's. Burt Lancaster is a typical 19th century trader/pirate whose only ambition is to make money out of the "natives", and fast. He comes to a Pacific Island Utopia where no one has to work... because who needs money?...

Vastly underrrated, this film makes all kinds of points. The Natives (half of whom, admittedly,are white guys in blackface)are dangerous quasi-cannibals. But the white guys (including Burt!)are plain Euro- Trash. The head chief, and Burt's head wife (Joan Rice in a lovely performance - she takes the cliché of the innocent island girl and makes a performance out of it with her eyelashes) are the real heroes.

Did I mention the Chinese dentist who knows more about investments than Burt? Or the German philosophy student who can relate to the natives better than Europeans? Filmed on location in Fiji with a cast that seem to be having the time of their lives, HIS MAJESTY O'KEEFE is a very simple, yet completely fun relic of the non-PC days. (P.S. Check out the other scripts by Borden Chase. Some good ones there...)

This film is not Lancaster's best but is enjoyable if you enjoy watching him in his athletic prime. Beautifully shot, it captures the exciting times of adventure on the high seas and island exploration. The plot is fairly insubstantial and there's nothing new here but at just over 90 minutes, the story never drags. Definitely worth a look if you're a fan of Burt's.

Captain David O'Keefe was a real-life person, a 19th century Irish-born adventurer from Savannah, Georgia, who made his fortune in the copra trade on the South Pacific island of Yap. This film is a fictionalised version of his life-story, and as one might expect takes a few liberties with history. In the film O'Keefe becomes king of Yap and defends his people against the incursions of aggressive German colonisers. In reality, when O'Keefe arrived on the island in 1871 it was a Spanish colony and the newly-united German Empire had no interest in acquiring colonies in the South Pacific or anywhere else. Yap did not become German until 1899, well after the date at which the film is set. This change was possibly made because in 1954, only nine years after the end of the war, American audiences would have been more accustomed to seeing Germans than Spaniards as cinematic villains. The film does, however, provide one "good German" in the shape of O'Keefe's friend Alfred Tetens, another real-life person.

O'Keefe did indeed marry a local girl as shown here, but the film tactfully omits the fact that their marriage was invalid because he already had a wife in Savannah. The Production Code officially forbade the depiction of racially mixed marriages or romances, but by the fifties there seemed to be an unofficial relaxation of this rule in force. Relationships between white men and non-white women could be shown provided (a) the girl was described as being of mixed race and (b) she was played by a white actress. This rule was applied in "Showboat" and "Love is a Many-Splendoured Thing", and is also applied here. O'Keefe's sweetheart Dalabo, supposedly of mixed European and Micronesian descent, is played by the Derbyshire-born Joan Rice. Dalabo has a rival for O'Keefe's affections, but the said rival, being pure- blooded Yapese, has to lose out.

Rice, although undoubtedly decorative to look at, is never really convincing as a native of the South Seas, or for that matter of any part of the world further south than Derbyshire. Burt Lancaster, however, makes an agreeable hero, and receives good support from André Morell as Tetens. Later in his career Lancaster could be a very intense actor, often appearing in dramas with a serious social, political or philosophical purpose, but in his action films of the early fifties his style of acting was generally much more relaxed, and so it is here.

Many film-makers of the early days of the cinema were reluctant to venture too far away from a Hollywood studio, even when their films were ostensibly set in some exotic part of the globe. This attitude still prevailed in some quarters during the fifties; for example "Brigadoon", also made in 1954, had to be shot on MGM's sound stage, against a vast painted backdrop of Scottish-style scenery, because Dore Schary was reluctant to stump up the cost of transporting cast and crew all the way to Scotland, or even to some part of America that looked like Scotland. In other quarters, however, attitudes were changing as the studios began to realise that local colour and authentic scenery could be useful weapons in their battle against the new enemy, television.

"His Majesty O'Keefe" is a case in point, as much of the film was actually shot on location in the South Pacific. This doubtless increased the budget, but I think that the decision was the right one, as the result was a colourful, visually attractive film. Byron Haskin is unlikely to feature very highly on any list of Hollywood's great auteurs, but he was capable of producing some very decent and enjoyable adventure films (his 1953 version of "The War of the Worlds" is probably the best known) and this is another in that category. 7/10

I don't know why His Majesty O'Keefe isn't an extremely famous classic, included on all referenced lists, one that almost everyone sees at least once in their lifetime. It has all the elements: Technicolor, exotic setting, period piece, interesting story, a scantily-clad romance, energetic acting, and a hunky, shirtless Burt Lancaster. You won't want to feel traitorous, but after you watch this movie you'll find yourself wondering, "Why wasn't Burt Lancaster the lead in Ben-Hur?" Burt plays an American sea captain, stranded to an island in the South Pacific after a mutiny on his ship. He's ambitious and a little greedy, so when he finds a natural resource that's valuable, he doesn't hesitate to exploit the native islanders into workers and harvesters. He also romances a few island babes along the way, but his selfish ways just might catch up with him. . .

If you like Burt Lancaster, you need to watch this one. If you don't, watch it anyway and you'll probably develop a massive crush on him after the first ten minutes.