Two Years Before the Mast (film)
Encyclopedia
Two Years Before the Mast is a 1946
1946 in film
The year 1946 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*November 21 - William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives premieres in New York featuring an ensemble cast including Fredric March, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, and Harold Russell.*December 20 - Frank Capra's It's a...

 adventure film
Adventure film
Adventure films are a genre of film.Unlike pure, low-budget action films they often use their action scenes preferably to display and explore exotic locations in an energetic way....

 based on Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
Richard Henry Dana Jr. was an American lawyer and politician from Massachusetts, a descendant of an eminent colonial family who gained renown as the author of the American classic, the memoir Two Years Before the Mast...

's travel book of the same name
Two Years Before the Mast
Two Years Before the Mast is a book by the American author Richard Henry Dana, Jr., published in 1840, having been written after a two-year sea voyage starting in 1834. A film adaptation under the same name was released in 1946.- Background :...

. It starred Alan Ladd
Alan Ladd
-Early life:Ladd was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He was the only child of Ina Raleigh Ladd and Alan Ladd, Sr. He was of English ancestry. His father died when he was four, and his mother relocated to Oklahoma City where she married Jim Beavers, a housepainter...

, Brian Donlevy
Brian Donlevy
Brian Donlevy was an Irish-born American film actor, noted for playing tough guys from the 1930s to the 1960s. He usually appeared in supporting roles. Among his best known films are Beau Geste and The Great McGinty...

, William Bendix
William Bendix
William Bendix was an American film, radio, and television actor, best remembered in movies for the title role in the movie The Babe Ruth Story and for portraying clumsily earnest aircraft plant worker Chester A. Riley in radio and television's The Life of Riley...

, Howard Da Silva
Howard Da Silva
Howard Da Silva was an American actor.-Early life:He was born Howard Silverblatt in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Benjamin and Bertha Silverblatt. His parents were both Yiddish speaking Jews born in Russia. He had a job as a steelworker before beginning his acting career on the stage...

 and Esther Fernández
Esther Fernández
Esther Fernández was a Mexican film actress of the Golden age of Mexican cinema in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s....

.

Plot summary

In 1834, Charles Stewart
Charles Stewart
-UK people:* Charles Stewart , Scottish-born merchant and officeholder involved in the Somersett Case* Charles William Stewart later Charles William Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry...

 (Alan Ladd), the spoiled, dissolute son of a shipping magnate, is shanghaied
Shanghaiing
Shanghaiing refers to the practice of conscripting men as sailors by coercive techniques such as trickery, intimidation, or violence. Those engaged in this form of kidnapping were known as crimps. Until 1915, unfree labor was widely used aboard American merchant ships...

 aboard the Pilgrim
Pilgrim
A pilgrim is a traveler who is on a journey to a holy place. Typically, this is a physical journeying to some place of special significance to the adherent of a particular religious belief system...

, one of his father's own ships. He embarks upon a long, hellish sea voyage under the tyrannical rule of Captain Francis Thompson (Howard Da Silva), assisted by his first mate, Amazeen (William Bendix). One of his crewmates is Richard Henry Dana Jr.
Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
Richard Henry Dana Jr. was an American lawyer and politician from Massachusetts, a descendant of an eminent colonial family who gained renown as the author of the American classic, the memoir Two Years Before the Mast...

(Brian Donlevy).
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