by Stephen Vagg
Hollywood didn’t pay much attention to Australia as a source of story material during the 1930s, with a few notable exceptions (Stingaree, Captain Fury), but that changed during World War Two. The Pacific War put Australia on American front pages more often, so you had stories of Australians at war (The Man from Down Under, The Desert Rats, The Sea Chase), famous Australians (Interrupted Melody, Million Dollar Mermaid), meat pie Westerns (The Kangaroo Kid, Kangaroo) or melodramas with Australian backdrops (Under Capricorn). And in 1953 came the historical epic Botany Bay, aka Hollywood’s version of the First Fleet (or, rather, a story about a fictitious boat that apparently came after the First Fleet).
This movie came about not so much due to Hollywood interest in the origin story of European Australia, but rather, the popularity of the novels of Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. This duo specialised in scribbling tales of Pacific history – Mutiny on the Bounty had been successfully filmed in 1935, and The Hurricane in 1937. Other films of their novels included The Turtles of Tahiti (1942), Passage to Marseille (1944) and High Barbaree (1947).
Nordhoff visited Sydney in 1938 to research the novel but, according to Hall, then lost interest, so Hall started work on it on his own. However, Paramount bought the screen rights to the book prior to publication for $50,000 – Mutiny on the Bounty and The Hurricane had been big hits – so Hall rejoined the project, and Botany Bay was published in 1941. It was their eighth novel together and you can read it here.
The duo continued to collaborate after Botany Bay – they even discussed doing a sequel to the book – although apparently Hall did the bulk of their work from that point on.
The studio took its time over filming, most likely due to cost involved (boats, costumes, water), and the fact that the novel wasn’t, to be blunt, super interesting. Joel McCrea was announced as star at first, then Ray Milland, but what really got Botany Bay the green light was Two Years Before the Mast (1946), Paramount’s adaptation of the seafaring memoir of Richard Henry Dana. This movie, starring Alan Ladd (honest sailor) and Howard da Silva (sadistic captain) and directed by John Farrow, was a huge hit, and re-energised Paramount’s interest in the Nordhoff-Hall novel. So, they assigned the project to Ladd and Farrow, with the script written by the legendary Jonathan Latimer (who’d collaborated with Farrow a number of times).
Ladd once again played an honest sailor, with James Mason enlisted to play a sadistic captain. Filming started in late 1951, by which time both Nordhoff and Hall were dead.
It was Ladd’s last movie under contract to that studio, which had turned him into a star a decade earlier. Paramount was stockpiling its Alan Ladd movies to stagger their releases – so Botany Bay would not hit cinemas until late 1953.
According to Ladd’s biographer, Beverly Linet, the star was in a bad head space making the movie – he’d just made Shane and was unsure if he was doing the right thing leaving Paramount (he also had a drinking problem and mental health issues which would contribute to his suicide the following decade). We mention this because his performance in Botany Bay feels a little “off” – he’s not as comfortable as in Two Years Before the Mast. But then, the whole movie isn’t as good.
Anyway, for the plot… Botany Bay starts in a Newgate Prison in 1787 where a bunch of inmates find out that their death sentences have been commuted to transportation to New South Wales. Among them are Alan Ladd, playing an American medical student falsely accused of highway robbery – actually, come to think of it, he was guilty, it’s just that he had the right to commit the robbery.
Most of the story concerns the trip out; among the other passengers are a dodgy highwayman (Jonathan Harris, later Dr Smith from Lost in Space, and hugely fun), an “actress” who always seems to have plenty of lipstick and mascara (Patricia Medina), a sympathetic parson (Murray Matheson, one of the few cast members who was actually Australian), a whiny child (John Hardy) and his mother (Dorothy Pattern), and a top criminal (Hugh Pryse). As mentioned, there’s also a tyrannical captain (James Mason, in excellent form).
Once on board, Medina (we’ll use actor names) gets a hard time from some cackling old crones. Just before the ship sails – it’s going out on its own, just after the First Fleet – Ladd finds out from Pryse that he’s been given a pardon, but Mason won’t let him go, Mason offers Medina special treatment if she “behaves”. Ladd tries to escape, but is caught and flogged, and plots to escape.
The parson has a scene with Medina where he tells her that the prisoners are mostly “unfortunates who’ve fallen foul of unjust and harsh laws”, who mostly stole a loaf of bread and tries to cheer up Medina, saying that in Sydney she will “be given a wonderful chance – “cooking, washing, making clothes”. And if she’s married, she’ll get land. So, she sets her cap at Ladd, gets him appointed ship’s surgeon (we think his character is vaguely based on William Redfern), he makes a crack about her relationship with Mason, so she slaps his face. Then there’s a cat fight on the deck between Medina and a bunch of crones (Mason orders floggings and head shavings as a result).
Mason tries to seduce Medina, but she blackmails him into leaving her alone (she knows his relatives). Ladd tries to escape again but is recaptured again and is keel-hauled. The young child is busted trying to take a compass back into Mason’s room and is thrown in gaol where he dies.
Then the ship arrives in a studio backlot Sydney – cue the odd koala and sounds of cockatoos – for the last act of the film. Governor Phillip (played by Cedric Hardwicke) gives a speech to Ladd saying how Australia is full of fertile soil waiting to be tamed, etc, but can’t intervene when Mason arranges to take Ladd back. Ladd tries to escape, Mason catches him, then some deus ex machina Aboriginals (played by African Americans) intervene and kill Mason. Ladd spots an outbreak of scurvy just in time, is given a pardon… and elects to stay in Australia with Medina.
Botany Bay is fascinating for Australians – the simple fact that it was made, seeing Hollywood’s version of colonial Sydney on the backlot, moments like Ladd describing Aboriginals as being “like our Indians, we don’t bother them, they won’t bother us.” It’s kind of based on history, but you have to squint.
It doesn’t really work as a drama – the story is “bitsy” and repetitive, with far too many escapes, recaptures, and floggings. The romance between Ladd and Medina is also repetitive – “you’re a tramp”/”no I’m not” etc etc. Mason’s “villain” is actually quite sympathetic – after all, he’s trying to keep order and most of the convicts are nothing but trouble (and they over act to boot).
In fairness to Paramount, and Nordhoff and Hall, the First Fleet was a little boring dramatically. They probably should have borrowed more from the Marcus Clarke novel For the Term of His Natural Life, which has a similar repetition problem but far better characters. In particular, it could have done with a duo like John Rex and Sarah Purfoy from Term, who livened things up – someone out to get Ladd for his fortune, and a woman in love with the cad. Whatever the solution, the script needed to lose an escape/recapture sequence and add an extra element – another character, a twist on the love story, make Mason and Ladd related, something.
John Farrow made some terrific movies (Wake Island, The Saint Strikes Back, The Big Clock) including several with Ladd (Calcutta, Two Years Before the Mast) and had a strong naval background, starting his career as a sailor, serving in the Canadian navy during the war, writing and directing several naval movies. But this is not one of his better efforts – his heart doesn’t seem that into it, apart from a few occasions (eg the funeral of the boy). He later made another Australian-set story, The Sea Chase (well, it starts off in Sydney), which is much more entertaining, because it has a stronger story.
Botany Bay is… fine. It’s not a disaster like Kangaroo (1952), it’s just a little flat. There are hints at a more interesting movie, such as Mason possibly being a rake – if they’d really leant into him being a full-on sadist and sleaze, like he was in the Gainsborough melodramas; the movie would have been more entertaining. There is some excellent acting, and it has the benefits of an “A” picture from a major studio – decent production values, etc. The movie did “okay” at the box office, making around $2 million – not as much as Ladd’s Westerns from this period (Shane, The Iron Mistress).
Hollywood did keep up its interest in Australian subjects for the rest of the decade, filming The Sundowners, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, On the Beach and so on. But the only people we can rely on telling our own stories are ourselves.
