Republic Pictures, the longtime B-movie studio that specialized in singing cowboy Westerns and action-packed serials, produced The Eternal Sea. By 1955 the kinds of movies in which Republic excelled were dying off, so Republic unsuccessfully dabbled in "nervous As," somewhat bigger and more ambitious productions, though still modest by big studio standards. That didn't work, and the studio stopped making feature films altogether three years later.

The Eternal Sea must have seemed like a good bet. Biopics were extremely popular for about 15 years. Another lesser studio, Columbia, kicked the genre into high gear with The Jolson Story (1946), which earned $7.6 million in domestic rentals, making it one of the top-grossing films of the entire 1940s. A glut of similar pictures followed: The Glenn Miller Story (1954) was another huge hit ($7.7 million), and star James Stewart did three others still remembered today, The Stratton Story (1949, $4 million), Billy Wilder's The Spirit of St. Louis (1957, oddly, a flop), and The FBI Story (1959, also a disappointment).

In The Stratton Story Stewart plays Monty Stratton, an aspiring baseball pitcher who loses his right leg in a hunting accident. Initially devastated by this career-ending injury, Stratton resolves to join the Major Leagues in spite of his disability, and against impossible odds and through single-minded determination does just that. The Eternal Sea, with minor variations, tells an identical story.

Presented in 1.66:1 widescreen, The Eternal Sea generally looks good in this Olive Films-distributed Blu-ray, though the film elements do show signs of age-related damage.

The crux of the film's screenplay has family man Capt. John Hoskins (Sterling Hayden) desperately yearning to command his own big ship in the Pacific during the Second World War though his wife, Sue (Alexis Smith), has mixed feelings, concerned as she is about her husband's safety.

Hoskins's luck is truly terrible. First he's assigned the Hornet but it's sunk before he can take command. Then he's appointed command of the USS Princeton, but upon arrival learns that the ship is being readied to spearhead the Philippine invasion, so he's forced to sit by until old friend Capt. William Buracker (Hayden Rorke) completes that mission and can relieve him. However, the Princeton is fatally hit by the enemy and Hoskins's leg is crushed in an explosion, forcing the eventual amputation of his right foot when gangrene sets in.

The centerpiece of the film has Hoskins determined to take command of the new Princeton, with the officer watching its construction in a Navy shipyard while he recuperates and undergoes physical therapy from an adjacent hospital. (He's like an expectant father in a maternity ward.) Sue, meanwhile, is worried that her husband is simply unable to face the realities of his injury.

The Eternal Sea is very standard stuff but it manages to push most of the right buttons. Hayden, a grossly undervalued actor, is very good. He always claimed he worked in films solely to finance his own real love of the sea and sailing, and some of this seems to rub off in his performance. When Hoskins's unexpectedly wins that coveted appointment to command the new Princeton, the look of deeply-moved if understated joy appears very genuine.

Hayden might have been able to develop his lead role in John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle(1950) into a big studio career, but Hayden's ambivalence toward acting combined with his left-leaning politics seem to doom any chance of that. He had briefly been a member of the Communist Party, the result of his great admiration for the Yugoslav partisans fighting the fascist Croatians while he served as an OSS agent during World War II. (Hayden received a commendation from no less than Marshal Tito for his service.) During the Red Scare, however, Hayden buckled under to threats by the House Un-American Activities Committee and named names, a decision that haunted him with profound regret until his dying day.

He worked steadily, but his now-tarnished reputation relegated Hayden to B-movies for many years after. Most of these were forgettable, but wise filmmakers recognizing Hayden's talents sought him out for a handful of classics, primarily Crime Wave, Johnny Guitar, and Suddenly (all 1954); The Killing (1956), and Terror in a Texas Town (1958). He later brilliantly played Gen. Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964), then became quite active again during the 1970s, in The Godfather (1972), The Long Goodbye (1973), 1900 (1976), and Winter Kills (1979), among others.

Hayden's reputation may be behind the film's aggressively patriotic tone, which has unusually long acknowledgments to the U.S. Navy at the end, while the opening credits, somewhat oddly, note, "This picture was produced in Hollywood, U.S.A. by the Republic Studio Organization." John H. Auer, the last man billed, also gets an atypical credit: "Associate Producer-Director."

The film keeps viewers interested but is otherwise routine, except maybe the opening, a strange scene depicting Hoskins's nighttime homecoming after a long absence. Lurking in shadows, gently tapping on the windows, he briefly terrorizes the wife and kids inside, making the scene play like a weird cross between the homecoming in The Best Years of Our Lives and Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter.

The cast is also fun for people who, like this reviewer, enjoy watching the work of seasoned character actors. Fourth-billed Dean Jagger had won an Oscar (for Twelve O'Clock High), but even minor roles are cast with the kind of players that populated these sorts of movies: Ben Cooper (also from Johnny Guitar), Virginia Grey (as Sue's best friend), Douglas Kennedy, Louis Jean Heydt, Richard Crane, Morris Ankrum, Frank Ferguson, James Best, Willis Bouchey, Roy Roberts, Robert Shayne, Arthur Space, Mary Treen, and Dick Wessel among them.

Video & Audio

Presented in its original 1.66 widescreen The Eternal Sea shows its age, particularly in dissolves and other opticals, which exhibit signs of damage, but the image is impressively sharp most of the time, and blacks are good. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono is likewise acceptable. No subtitles, alternate audio options, and no Extra Features.

Parting Thoughts

Unmemorable but not bad thanks to its cast and general competence, The Eternal Sea should be of great interest to naval buffs, but even hard-core fans of classical Hollywood films are likely to find this just so-so. Still worth seeing once, however. Rent It.

Stuart Galbraith IV is the Kyoto-based film historian and publisher-editor of World Cinema Paradise. His new documentary and latest audio commentary, for the British Film Institute's Blu-ray of Rashomon, will be released this September.