The Sea Beast
About The Sea Beast
Ahab Ceeley (John Barrymore) is in love with Esther Harper (Dolores Costello). He loses a leg to the white whale through the treachery of his half-brother Derek (George O'Hara). He takes a whaler with a mixed crew and hunts the whale. Unlike Melville's captain, he comes back alive and returns to Esther.
Cast & crew
More about The Sea Beast
Millard Webb directed for Warner Bros. Bess Meredyth adapted Moby-Dick, with Rupert Hughes and Jack Wagner also credited on the script. Byron Haskin directed the photography, Frank Kesson shot additional scenes, and Kenneth MacLean filmed the special effects. The picture opened on 15 January 1926 at Warner's Theatre in New York. The American Film Institute lists 10 reels, 10,250 feet. Barrymore had signed a three-film Warner contract in 1925 after Beau Brummel and insisted on this story before Don Juan. Because of that delay, Don Juan, not The Sea Beast, became the first Warner feature with a Vitaphone score. A 1930 remake, Moby Dick, used this plot again with Barrymore. Joan Bennett played Esther because Dolores Costello was pregnant.
Themes
Making
Barrymore pushed the Melville story to the front of his new Warner contract, ahead of Don Juan.
Reviews
Mordaunt Hall, New York Times, 16 January 1926, credited Barrymore with "energy, earnestness and virility" as Ahab Ceeley, and said the performance landed in the second half, as master of a whaler. He thought Webb lost tension with long close-ups and with too many miniature seas.
Audiences
It was Warner Bros.' highest-grossing film of 1926.
Look
Byron Haskin directed photography, with Frank Kesson on additional scenes. Kenneth MacLean shot the special effects, including the ship miniatures Hall later complained were used too often.
Technique
MacLean's special-effects unit finished its work in December 1925, cutting miniature seas against the shipboard scenes.
Preservation
The film survives.
Notes
- Queequeg is played by Sam Baker. Mike Donlin plays Flask. Joyzelle Joyner dances in a prologue.
- Characters named Esther and Derek do not appear in the novel. Ahab's safe return is also an addition.
Scenes
- Derek's treachery puts Ahab in the way of the whale, and he loses the leg.
- Ahab comes back from the hunt to Esther.
Influenced by
- Moby-Dick (Herman Melville, 1851)
Influenced
- Moby Dick (1930)
