Away All Boats

Away All Boats is directed by Joseph Pevney and adapted to screenplay by Ted Sherdeman from the novel written by Kenneth M. Dodson. It stars Jeff Chandler, George Nader, Lex Barker, Julie Adams, Richard Boone and Charles McGraw. A Technicolor/Vista/Vision production, music is by Frank Skinner and Heinz Roemheld and cinematography by William H. Daniels.

Captain Jebediah Hawks (Chandler) is determined to whip his newly acquired crew into shape aboard The Belinda, a transport ship serving the waters of the South Pacific as the Japanese hone in for the kill.

Standard rank and file war movie of the era here, it looks nice, action is decently put together and is dotted along the narrative at regular intervals. The cast are watchable thesps as well, but it lacks heart in the characterisations as written on the page. The core meat of the story is the emotional hodge-podge aboard the Belinda, as Captain Jebediah rules with an iron fist and his charges respond to varying degrees of annoyance, we await the inevitable bond of men and flag waving histrionics. It just takes too long to develop and when the finale comes, what should be a moment of emotional wallop, comes rather as a merciful release that finally the near two hour movie is over. 6/10

The ship that served as the "Belinda" in the movie was a sister ship to the one I served on in the Pacific Amphibious Force in the 1960s. She is a World War II Victory Class Attack Transport who main battery, as the Captain said, are her boats (we carried 26). The ships in one of the scenes with the sailing craft were all Atlantic Amphibious Force ships. The USS Sandoval (APA-194) was the "Belinda". The five inch gun, seen firing in the air attack scene, is at the USS Alabama (BB-60) Memorial along with the five inch guns off of other attack transports. When I see this movie I can see my own ship of so long ago. I hope those who see this movie will understand a little better what was involved in the over-the-beach invasions during World War II. Jeff Chandler did a good job of portraying a Captain who's job it was to put a new ship into commission and get the crew prepared for combat. A great many of the officers of these ships were Naval Reservists, some with merchant marine background as is the 1st Lieutenant in the movie, so many of them had years at sea and had commanded ships of their own. Thrown into active naval service they sometimes, as shown, hold a little resentment at being told what to do. The Executive Officer was shown to be, at best, lazy or uninterested. He comes around and volunteers for a hazardous duty which earns the admiration of the 1st Lieutenant. Overall, the movie was well done and, for the reasons stated above, believe it would be worth viewing by the younger generation.

Away All Boats is a nice war picture about the captain and crew of a Navy transport ship in World War II. Jeff Chandler is all navy and the total professional as he takes command of the USS Belinda and whips the crew and the ship into professional fighting trim.

But command is a lonely business and the captain is slowly broken down both physically and mentally. In a way, Chandler's Jebediah Hawks is the antithesis of the Captain in Mister Roberts. Chandler is also in one of the less glamorous parts of the Navy, but even as a disciplinarian, he commands respect in a way that James Cagney in Mister Roberts never could and never will.

Chandler gets good support in this film from the rest of the cast which includes such professionals as Richard Boone, George Nader, Lex Barker, and Charles McGraw.

Good war picture, I highly recommend it.

Though frequently melodramatic, this film gives a viewer a good feel for the business of running one of the less glamorous but vital warships of the period. Much of the Navy footage is vivid and convincing. The opening dialogue between the old shipbuilder and the young officer is a memorable dramatic device.

There was a time that I would watch any war movie I could find. A Saturday afternoon on KHQ in Spokane would have either the "Creature Features" or something else innocuous and old, like Away All Boats, a movie that boasted being the most expensive film ever made by its studio or Hollywood, back in 1956.

Having read the book and seen the movie (probably a dozen times), it would be fair to say that it's one of my favorites, the story an attack transport in the Pacific War, captained by a man who wants to command a real warship, but is willing to pay his dues first.

It's all so vanilla, with every darn stereotype you can imagine, only on a big, lumbering freighter instead of in a foxhole. The skipper is wound too tight, the XO can't figure him out, the officers and men hate him, and they're all up to the task when the Kamikazes show up and turn the Belinda into a big, lumbering piece of almost scrap iron.

It is fun watching and identifying all the character actors who man the guns in this classically antiseptic, very '50s, WWII shootemup. The special effects are pretty impressive, what with a lot of the ships the US Navy lent to the film makers still in service. Modern kiddies might groan at the matte photography of Japanese Zeroes hurtling in to smash the Belinda into a blazing hulk, but I still have an image burned (pun intended) in my memory of Jeff Chandler screaming at the oncoming plane, waving as if he could by force of will make the crippled plane and its Jihadist pilot miss, "Get away from my ship, get AWAY from MY ship!"

Strong stuff.

That scene made Away All Boats step up a rung on the quality-meter and makes me recommend it to you, if you can find it in the "classics" section of your larger video store.