The Deep Six

This movie was really quite bad. No action, the conflicts were not well dramatized. Alan Ladd did not seem to be giving much of an effort here at all. He looked about 15 years older than his 45 years. However, there are a lot of famous actors in it and only fun part of this was in guessing their names. "Hey, that was Jerry(the beaver) Mathers!" From beginning to end this movie never really got off the ground. The pacing seemed very slow and if I'm not mistaken it was done with a small budget. At one point the destroyer they were on changed to an aircraft carrier during a Japanese strafing run. All the action scenes and scenes were rushed and seemed uninteresting. William Bendix was probably the best of the bunch at the time. The story lines of the side characters were never developed to a point where anyone could care about them.

This is one of a series of films made by Alan Ladd on the downhill side of his career after he left Paramount. A lot of them were good routine action stuff that had made him so popular in the 1940s. But he was getting older and wouldn't transition into older character parts.

The Deep Six concerns a naval reserve officer who because of his Quaker upbringing freezes in a combat situation. The men on the ship lose confidence in him and his only friend is the CPO on the destroyer, played by William Bendix.

In fact Bendix gives the best performance in the film. Ladd and Bendix did several films together at Paramount in the 1940s and they had a deep friendship and an easy camaraderie that comes through in The Deep Six. Bendix was a cut above a lot of the other character actors at Paramount, whereas he may have been doing character roles at Paramount, from the mid 40s on he was a popular radio and then TV star with his Life of Riley series.

The rest of the cast fills their roles out nicely. James Whitmore, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Dianne Foster, and especially Keenan Wynn as the ship's hardnosed executive officer who is Ladd's chief tormentor. Look for Joey Bishop in a small role as one of the sailors.

The cast is terrific, especially the always under-appreciated Dianne Foster in a thankless role, and the dialogue is crisp. But most of the cast is considerably older than their roles, and this movie adds little new information. If you like character-study war movies, this is a good time. I give it 6/10.

Early scenes : French Restaurant and Ladd's Beach House are Paradise Cove, Malibu area.

Raised by a peace-loving Quaker mother, artist Alan Ladd (as Alexander "Alec" Austen) is nevertheless enlisted for World War II service. This interrupts his romance with attractive younger Dianne Foster (as Susan Cahill). In the Navy, Mr. Ladd meets a typical group of movie sailors. These include frequent co-star William Bendix (as "Frenchy" Shapiro), secretive Keenan Wynn (as Mike Edge), commander James Whitmore (as Warren Meredith) and roommate Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (as Doctor Blanchard). Stand up comic Joey Bishop plays an oddly attractive young sailor, and future "Alvin and the Chipmunks" creator Ross Bagdasarian provides the crew with dozens of Armenian woman. Ladd is made gunnery officer, but his pacifist past causes him to freeze when it's time to shoot. Ladd must learn how to kill or put his crew in danger...

***** The Deep Six (1/15/58) Rudolph Mate ~ Alan Ladd, William Bendix, Dianne Foster, Joey Bishop