The Last Voyage

Working with a creative script by Gwen & John Bagni, Robert Florey maintains maximum suspense in this "ticking time bomb" drama, with Charles Boyer firmly in command as a sea captain about to retire after his last mission.

The supporting cast including Regis Toomey is negligible, no match for Chuck's subtle, powerful thesping. He's received two messages from shore, one from a doctor pronouncing his wife of 24 years has died, and the other giving the key plot element, withheld during the first half of the show: a bomb has been planted on board!

How Chuck outsmarts the bomber (who has remained on board as part of the crew) and saves the day is terrific entertainment.

While I had a bit of difficulty initially believing that the suave French actor Charles Boyer could be a sea captain, this was a very good installment of "Four Star Playhouse".

When the show begins, the captain receives a wire that his wife has died. Soon after, the captain announces that he's gotten word that the ship has a bomb aboard and so instead of landing at port, he'll keep the ship at sea until the saboteur reveals the whereabouts of the bomb. Many of the crew think the captain's lost his mind...and some wonder if his wife's death has made him unstable. What follows is a very interesting waiting game...making for a nice, tense show.

Overall, this one features nice acting and a nice script. Together, it makes for an episode that is still worth seeing all these decades later...and you can by downloading it for free from archive.org--a site often linked to IMDb pages.

It is a bittersweet Last Voyage for the veteran sea captain (Charles Boyer.)

On the verge of retirement. He can now spend time with his wife in their dream house. It has views of the ocean from three sides of the house. She has spent all these years worrying about him while he was out at sea.

Only the captain gets two messages. One telling him that his wife has died.

All of a sudden, the captain behaves erratically, changing the course of the ship. His crew are worried, maybe the captain has become unhinged with the bad news about his wife. He might want to scuttle ship and go down himself taking the crew with him.

Only it turns out that the other message is about a bomb on the ship. It is intended to go off when the ship arrives in port in Japan.

The captain needs to smoke the culprit out in time, while his crew are suspicious about his mental wellbeing.

A solid story. It was nicely done with the captain trying to wheedle the information about the whereabouts of the bomb out from the culprit.