Donovan’s Reef

One of my guilty pleasures. 

I first saw Donovan’s Reef on network TV as a kid and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Since then I’ve grown older, more experienced if not wiser, and see problematic elements in the film, both in content and execution.

And I don’t give a rat’s patoot.  It’s still fun.

When I showed tis to Soon-ok recently, I told her, “It’s like South Pacific only John Wayne and Lee Marvin have fistfights instead of singing.”

Imagine my surprise when researching this post to discover it was based on a James Michner story (he’s uncredited in the final film, perhaps because the movie took too many liberties with his material).

It’s not a good movie -- director John Ford suffered health problems during production and much if not most of the film was directed by Wayne -- but it’s a fun movie, never taking itself seriously but just having a ball.

Modern audiences looking at Donovan’s Reef are apt to be turned off by a lot of attitudes that at best can be referred to as patronizing today, but one needs to remember the time it was made.

In 1963 segregation and laws against interracial marriage were still in effect in much of the country.  For Donovan’s Reef to come out squarely against such things was a fairly gutsy choice for a movie aimed at popcorn munching middle American audiences of the era.

The story is about three WWII vets living on a small island in the Pacific.  Survivors of a torpedoed American destroyer, they made their way ashore to lead a resistance to the Japanese occupation forces with the help of the island’s princess and her people.

That’s all well in the past, they’ve been living on the island ever since as local heroes.  Donovan (Wayne) runs the titular Donovan’s Reef bar and owns a flotilla of schooners that handle interisland trade, Doc (Jack Warden) married the aforementioned princess and runs the island’s hospital, and Gilhooley (Lee Marvin) shows up once a year on the birthday he shares with Donovan to engage in a bar smashing fistfight.

Seriously.

The problem is Doc is heir to a Boston shipping company and the staid Bostonian side of the family sends his adult daughter Amelia (Elizabeth Allen) to the island to dig up dirt on him so they can exercise the morals clause in his inheritance and freeze him out.

Hilarity -- as we are wont to say in Hollywood -- ensues.

It’s a good thing Donovan’s Reef establishes their egalitarian credentials early ‘cause boy howdy, does it ever put on its size seventeen clown shoes and goes stomping about after that.  While not depicted badly the native population is mostly kept in the background, the Chinese living on the island are portrayed fairly offensively (in all fairness, the Australians who visit don’t come off any better), and both John Wayne (age 56 at time of filming) and Caesar Romero (also 56) as the French colonial governor hit on Allen (34 at time of filming but from dialog in the film her character can’t be older than 21).

In Caesar’s case he’s playing a slimeball interested in her only for her money, so his creepiness is in character, but Wayne?

Ewww…

(And I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I could ever become attracted to a friend’s biological child under any circumstances; too much drama, y’know?)

Anyway, Wayne and Caesar pass off Doc’s three children by his now deceased native wife as Donovan’s until Doc can return from a medical trip to a nearby island to handle the situation (no phones or radio to discuss the matter with him).

In the interim Donovan and Amelia butt heads but eventually develop a romantic relationship (all together now:  “Ewww!”) and she learns the father she’s never seen before is actually a pretty nice guy so she lets him keep his share of the company and everything ends happily.  Wayne and Marvin fistfight some more and Wayme proposes to Allen and she agrees to marry him so he ends the movie by spanking her (call your neighbors to come over and join us:  “Ewww!!!”).

If this movie had been made with these sensibilities in the 1920s or 30s, it would be regarded as a classic.  The physical comedy bits are all well executed (Marvin, despite appearing in mostly tough guy roles, demonstrates his comedic chops; he’d later win a Oscar as the drunken gunslinger in the Western comedy Cat Ballou).

And its heart is in the right place.  Donovan’s suggestion to pass the kids off as his own proves traumatic to Doc’s older daughter, the issue of racial prejudice is addressed head on and shown as wrong, and when she finally learns the truth, Amelia cheerfully accepts Doc’s kids as her step-siblings.

But Donovan’s Reef landed at a peculiar time in American pop culture.  JFK’s assassination still lay in the near future, the groundswell of what was to become the Sixties was just beginning, and old fashion bigotry still dominated much of the country. 

Credit where credit is due to the cast and crew of Donovan’s Reef for making the effort to be on the right side of history when the groundswell became a wave.

© Buzz Dixon