--- title: "Captains Courageous" year: 1937 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/captains-courageous" fi1m_score: 84 critics_reviews: 3 published: "2026-09-19T23:27:44.866720+00:00" updated: "2026-09-19T23:27:45.443442+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Captains Courageous (1937) Directed by Victor Fleming · 1h 55m · MPA G · Adventure, Drama, Family **Fi1m score: 84** · Critics: 3 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* A spoiled boy falls off a liner and lands on the only ship in the Atlantic that will not turn round for money > Victor Fleming’s film of Kipling’s novel puts a spoilt rich boy on a Gloucester fishing schooner and lets the sea and Spencer Tracy sort him out. It is sentimental, it knows it, and it earns most of what it asks for. ## Synopsis Harvey Cheyne (Freddie Bartholomew) is the motherless son of a tycoon, Frank Burton Cheyne (Melvyn Douglas), and has learned from him that anything can be bought. Suspended from boarding school for trying to bribe a classmate, he is taken aboard a liner bound for Europe, hangs over the rail after too many ice cream sodas and falls into the Atlantic. A Portuguese fisherman, Manuel Fidello (Spencer Tracy), hauls him into his dory and rows him to the Gloucester schooner We’re Here. Its skipper, Disko Troop (Lionel Barrymore), does not believe a word about the rich father, will not abandon a season’s fishing on the Banks to take him home, and offers him three dollars a month to work alongside his own son Dan (Mickey Rooney) until the hold is full. ## Review The poster called it as great as [*Mutiny on the Bounty*](https://film.one/film/mutiny-on-the-bounty), which is the sort of thing posters said in 1937. For once the boast is close to true. Victor Fleming’s film of Rudyard Kipling’s novel, from a screenplay credited to Marc Connelly, John Lee Mahin, Dale Van Every and Tom Kilpatrick, is a big studio picture about a small moral: a boy who has never had to do anything is made to do something. It is sentimental from the first reel to the last, and it is honest about how men on a working boat talk and behave, and the second keeps the first from going soft. Freddie Bartholomew plays Harvey properly, which means unpleasantly. For the first twenty minutes he lies, sulks, threatens the crew with his father’s lawyers and tries to buy his way ashore, and Bartholomew does not soften any of it. The film needs a boy you would not want in your house, and gets one. Melvyn Douglas, as the father who signs cheques instead of turning up, is good in the little he is given. He is given little. Then there is Spencer Tracy. Manuel Fidello has tight curls, a rolling accent from somewhere between Lisbon and a music hall, and a hurdy-gurdy he plays badly while singing “Yeah Ho, Little Fish”. For ten minutes we winced. Then we stopped, because Tracy plays the man as someone who likes his boat, his catch and this wretched boy, in roughly that order, and never asks us to find him lovable. When Manuel tells Harvey about his dead father, whom he still talks to at night over the side of the dory, and Harvey does not know what to say, we found we did not either. It is the scene we would use to explain the film to a stranger. Lionel Barrymore’s Disko Troop runs the We’re Here like a ledger: a boy who eats will fish. Barrymore keeps the gruffness low and does not perform it. Mickey Rooney’s Dan is the boat’s other boy, the one who has never been asked whether he wants to work, and Rooney plays the cheerfulness of someone who has not noticed the question. John Carradine’s Long Jack takes an immediate dislike to Harvey and is right to. Charley Grapewin’s Uncle Salters mutters at the edge of most scenes. Harold Rosson shot a good deal of it on real schooners under sail, and it shows. Dories go out into fog, the fleet sits on grey water with nothing behind it but more grey water, and men gut fish on a deck that is moving. There are stretches where the plot stops and the film just watches men work, and those were the stretches we liked best. The join with the studio tank is visible: rear projection behind Tracy in the dory has that lit-from-the-wrong-side look, and one storm is plainly a model in a bath. Elmo Veron cuts the fishing on the swing of a line and is at his slackest whenever the film goes back to land. Franz Waxman’s score stays out of the way for long stretches, then leans on Manuel’s tune whenever it wants us to feel something. The faults are the ones you would guess. The scenes ashore, with Douglas in offices and hotel rooms, stop the film every time. The second half takes a turn we will not describe, and after it the film pushes hard for twenty minutes, with the music up and the boy’s face held longer than it needs to be. That is where we noticed the film’s hand. We minded less than we expected. At 115 minutes it could lose ten. Fleming made [*The Wizard of Oz*](https://film.one/film/the-wizard-of-oz) and [*Gone with the Wind*](https://film.one/film/gone-with-the-wind) two years later, and neither has a scene as unshowy as Manuel rowing in the fog. Louis D. Lighton’s production has the money to build a liner and a schooner and the sense to keep the camera on the schooner. Among films that make a rotten child good through hardship, and there are many, this one is unusual in letting the hardship be dull, wet and repetitive. Watch it with a child of about ten if you have one to hand. They will be restless through the school and the liner and not at all once the dory hits the water. Keep a handkerchief within reach. You will know exactly what the film is doing to you and hand it over anyway. *Fi1m score 84, published 19 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (3) - **The New Yorker**, John C. Mosher (90/100, inferred): The film is described as a comfort and a triumph, with fog, water, boats, fish and human beings making as rich a picture as any that spring. The ocean and fishing fleet are singled out as magnificent, along with prize performances from Freddie Bartholomew and Spencer Tracy. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1937/05/15/1937-05-15-105-tny-cards-000026391) - **The New York Times** (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it another grand job of movie-making from MGM, with rich production, magnificent marine photography, admirable direction and performances that bring Kipling's novel vividly to life. The depiction of the Gloucester fishing fleet stands out for its almost documentary quality enriched by poetic photography. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1937/05/12/archives/the-screen-captains-courageous-based-on-kiplings-novel-has-its.html) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (90/100, inferred): The Kipling yarn has been given splendid production, performance, photography and dramatic composition after minor alterations to the story. Spencer Tracy's performance as the Portuguese fisherman Manuel is highlighted alongside strong work from the rest of the cast and the overall fine production values. [Read](https://variety.com/1936/film/reviews/captains-courageous-2-1200411430/) ## Details - **Director:** Victor Fleming - **Director:** Victor Fleming - **Screenplay:** Dale Van Every, John Lee Mahin, Marc Connelly, Tom Kilpatrick - **Novel:** Rudyard Kipling - **Cinematography:** Harold Rosson - **Editor:** Elmo Veron - **Music:** Franz Waxman - **Producer:** Louis D. Lighton - **Cast:** Freddie Bartholomew as Harvey Cheyne; Spencer Tracy as Manuel Fidello; Lionel Barrymore as Captain Disko Troop; Melvyn Douglas as Frank Burton Cheyne; Charley Grapewin as Uncle Salters; Mickey Rooney as Dan Troop; John Carradine as Long Jack; Oscar O'Shea as Captain Walt Cushman - **Runtime:** 1h 55m - **Certificate (MPA):** G - **Release (the US):** 25 June 1937 - **Genres:** Adventure, Drama, Family - **Budget:** $2 million ## Where to watch in the US Not streaming, renting or buying in the US at the last check. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1938: Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated); Best Actor (won) ## If you liked this - *The Yearling* (1946), Fi1m 79: Another boy grows up the hard way, this time in the Florida scrub with a fawn — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-yearling.md) - *Kes* (1969), Fi1m 88: The British answer: a Barnsley boy, a kestrel and no sentiment whatsoever — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/kes.md) - *The Black Stallion* (1979): Shipwreck, a boy, a horse, and a first hour with almost no dialogue - *Whale Rider* (2002): A Maori girl takes on her grandfather’s traditions on the New Zealand coast - *Moby Dick* (1956): Huston’s Melville, for when the sea should be the enemy rather than the teacher --- © Fi1m Ltd. 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