Neil Doyle An already aged-looking SPENCER TRACY is Captain Jones of the Mayflower in this MGM visualization of what the crossing to the New World may have been like on an overcrowded ship full of hopeful, determined passengers and crew. But neither he nor GENE TIERNEY (as Mrs. Bradford) seem at home in roles that are never really fleshed out by the script. Nevertheless, Tierney gets plenty of wistful close-ups as she gazes toward the horizon (or Tracy), but little of substance to do.Neither does VAN JOHNSON get more than a brief supporting role as John Alden. LEO GENN gets more material as Tierney's stuffed shirt husband but little can be said of the other passengers except for LLOYD BRIDGES who struts around as a bronzed, blue-eyed pirate with taking ways. He at least livens up the scene whenever he's around.The main trouble is the lack of strong drama in the script. Most of the passengers are a dull lot. Added to that, the lack of real chemistry between Tracy and Tierney makes it difficult to believe their love could be deep enough for her to care about this rude and cynical man completely lacking any sort of refinement in his nature.The big storm scene is well realized and staged for maximum effect, but only serves to remind us how dull the other sections of the film are.Summing up: A very uneven drama about an historical event that celebrated the birth of the New World. Should have been so much better.

vincentlynch-moonoi Spencer Tracy is tied right up there with Cary Grant as being my favorite actor. And I like (not love) this film. It certainly has a lot going for it -- Tracy, Gene Tierney (whose co-starring role is pivotal, yet smaller than one might expect), Van Johnson, and Leo Genn. The scenes at sea are done well, particularly the storm sequences. Yet, somehow, this film seems to come up just a bit short.While it's definitely fictionalized, there's a lot of history here, too. I tend to read up on historical films, and this one seems more realistic with the history than one is used to. Oddly enough, Van Johnson -- in my view an "okay" and "pleasant enough" actor -- probably comes off best of actor in this film. Spencer Tracy comes off waaaaay too dour for most of the film, although that does facilitate his redemption after landing at Plymouth; I would have to say that in regard to that characterization, perhaps the director overdid it. Gene Tierney plays who role well, but I think she might have been disappointed in the scope of it. There appears to be at least a possibility that her character did indeed commit suicide in real life, as portrayed in the film. Leo Genn does well as William Bradford (husband of the Tierney character). Lloyd Bridges isn't quite a swashbuckler here -- too earth for that, but plays his role nicely.So what is it that's missing here. Well, perhaps its that this is a story that should have been inspiring, yet in this rendition seems depressing. A number of Clarence Brown's (director) films are quite notable and enjoyable, and he had worked with Tracy (as Edison) before. But this time the results are disappointing. Interestingly, although this was his last film (1952), he lived another 35 years. Perhaps he realized he no longer had the spark.

Robert J. Maxwell Kids, I was compelled to check the "spoilers" box because you -- lacking in curiosity as you are -- might not know that the "Mayflower" was the ship on which the Pilgrims sailed to Boston in 1620. (That is, 1620 AD.) Henry Cabot Lodge was one of the passengers. (Well, he might as well have been.) The reason the Pilgrims were moving from Plymouth to Plymouth Rock was that they'd been subject to religious persecution in England. They didn't feel that the Church of England had moved far enough away from the sybaritic splendor of the highly ritualized Roman Catholic Church. It's a little complicated, but that's the general idea.Well, it was a perilous trip across the North Atlantic in 1620. They used sailing ships in those days, and they were almighty slow, so people ran out of food and water and stuff like that. Not like the today's QE2, where I left the hair salon with a pompadour that made me look like Donald Trump -- proud and unashamed. I'm not sure the British cuisine on the QE2 was that much of an improvement over the Mayflower's, but so be it. Boy, the Mayflower passengers were lucky to make it at all. But they did, and they gave us the American Revolution, the Constitution, baked beans, four presidents, and ultimately this movie.This is an MGM product so you get solid-as-a-rock family entertainment with magnificent production values. The special effects are fine. There is an exciting storm at sea that threatens to destroy the Mayflower. (Every story of a ship at sea must include a scene of a storm.) All the studio's talent is deployed, including a stellar cast. Spencer Tracy is Captain Jones, skipper of the Mayflower. Gene Tierney is the pouty-lipped married passenger whom he loves but whom he treats as an ordinary doxy. In supporting roles are rough sailor Lloyd Bridges, solemn preacher Leo Genn, civilian carpenter Van Johnson, sturdy diarist and narrator John Dehner, and reliable stalwarts like John Dierkes.There are two problems with the movie, and they're both pretty big.The casting decisions are inexplicable. Spencer Tracy as a consistently contemptuous, cynical, money-grubbing, underhanded Captain Queeg with glands? Hardly. Spencer Tracy is a man who carries moral authority along with his common sense Americanism. He's the firm, authoritative, slyly wisecracking, but empathic boss you wish you had.And Van Johnson as an unemployed carpenter saying lines like, "I had hoped to find me a berth for the night, sir"? Not a bit of it. Van Johnson is the optimistic, rosy-cheeked guy next door. He's polite, cheerful, and in love with Phyllis Thaxter. In any case, he's a lead, not a supporting player.That's the casting problem. Then there's the problem of the plot. How do you fill up an hour or more of a ship at sea full of relatively dull people? I mean, they're not pirates or mutineers. So you invent an intrigue between the gruff Tracy and the winsome Tierney that struck me as completely lacking in credibility. Tracy is not a romantic lead. He's short and rather dumpy and, though handsome in a manly way, looks nothing like Cary Grant. Tierney suffers because she is torn between her love for the adamantine Tracy and the pious Genn. She finally offs herself. Actually, she didn't. Two people died during the voyage, both of illness.I will bet, though, that there was genuine drama aboard the Mayflower. Here's why. There were about 130 people aboard, including both passengers and crew, and the ship itself was about 100 feet long. There was also every bit of cargo that a new community would need in a demanding new environment. One hundred feet is peanuts. The "tween decks", where many slept, was a space probably about four feet high. The people must have been piled on top of one another but you'd never know it. Space and violations of space are not very dramatic. We watch scenes of Van Johnson showing Dawn Addams where he goes when he wants to get away from things and be alone. It's the ship's rope locker, and it's about the size of the Garden Court Restaurant in San Francisco's Sheraton Palace Hotel. Kids, Googling will lead to goggling. You should have LUNCH there if possible. Try the cottage cheese. Tell them I sent you.Anyhow there's no gainsaying that MGM was the biggest most powerful studio in Hollywood at the time this was released, but that doesn't mean that somebody didn't make a couple of big mistakes.

bkoganbing In doing a review of Plymouth Adventure we should start out by saying this is most definitely not a docudrama about the Pilgrims. This is a film adaption of a novel by Ernest Gebler in which the author threw some things in there that never happened or are the subject of much speculation.Gene Tierney's character of Dorothy Bradford did in fact drown under unknown circumstances, but there is no reason to think it was suicide as opposed to an accident and her yearnings for Captain William Jones of the Mayflower is just part of the Gebler's fertile imagination. He was certainly imaginative enough giving a little scandalous romance into the Puritan community.Plymouth Adventure is a nice tribute to those brave and hearty souls who set forth into an unknown land in which half of them died the first winter, but those who survived creating an American national tradition in the Thanksgiving Holiday. And a black day for turkeys everywhere.Lately the religious right has latched on to the Pilgrims in their efforts to prove America is a Christian nation. Of course once they got here they ran what became the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a theocracy. Still they were an intrepid lot and their courage is beyond question.Spencer Tracy gives a fine performance as the rugged and cynical sea captain of the Mayflower, the chartered ship which takes the Pilgrims from Southampton to an unknown world. I think Tracy drew a lot from some of the characters in Eugene O'Neill's plays in his portrayal of Jones. He has a moment in which he says that people have disappointed him, but the sea never let him down. Could have come from any of O'Neill's works.An Oscar for Best Special Effects went to Plymouth Adventure showing some of the travails at sea the Mayflower went through. Back in its day MGM had a huge water tank that was used for all the sea sagas filmed there. Occasionally other studios rented it out, the facility was that good. Tracy has been there before when he was in Captains Courageous in spirit so to speak.Players like Van Johnson, Lowell Gilmore, Dawn Addams, Noel Drayton, Barry Jones, Kathleen Lockhart play some of the Pilgrim names come down from historical legend. Leo Genn is William Bradford, author of the Mayflower Compact which is cited interminably now by fundamentalist TV reverends as proof of our Christian heritage. Genn who rivaled Ronald Colman as possessor of the most beautiful speaking voice in the English speaking world would be a pleasure to listen to reading the Erie County phone book.My favorite in this is young Tommy Ivo who played William Button the only voyager on the Mayflower to die at sea. His death scene is a heart string tugging experience.Not the real story of the Mayflower voyage, Plymouth Adventure is still good entertainment and a stirring tribute to those who formalized the giving of thanks and the reasons they had to be thankful.