Moby Dick Overview:

Moby Dick (1956) was a Adventure - Drama Film directed by John Huston and produced by John Huston and Jack Clayton.

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Warner Archive: John Barrymore in a Pre-code Version of Moby Dick (1930)

By KC on Sep 27, 2016 From Classic Movies

"Call me Ishamael." Herman Melville's opening line to Moby Dick is one of the most famous first sentences in English literature, and yet, when a large volume of the book is opened to the first page in the credits of this pre-code take on the novel, there is no Ishamael in sight. The man himself neve... Read full article


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Quotes from

Ishmael: [in voice-over narration] Long days and nights we strained at the oars while a white whale swam freely on, widening the waters between himself and Ahab's vengeance.


Captain Ahab: By heavens man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and fate is the handspike.


Captain Ahab: Captain Gardner, I seek the white whale, your own son's murderer. I am losing time... Goodbye, and fare thee well, I say. God help you, Captain Gardiner.
Captain Gardiner: God forgive you, Captain Ahab.


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Facts about

Starbuck's Coffee franchise took its name from the character Starbuck of the Pequod crew.
Walter Mirisch recalls that John Huston insisted on filming aboard an actual ship at sea. Stormy conditions caused the cast and crew to become sick, delaying production and running over budget at 4.5 million dollars. The film to this day has not repaid what it cost to produce.
Over the years, John Huston and Gregory Peck, among others, have talked about how during filming on the Irish Sea, the company lost one - some say as many as three - rubber white whales; the assumption being that the special effects people built complete 60-foot leviathans from head to fin. However, cinematographer Oswald Morris, in his autobiography, "Huston, We Have a Problem," said that no full-length model whale was ever built. He claims the film company trolled the sea on the Pequod with a props barge nearby. The barge carried various parts of the whale's body (tailfins, hump, etc.), which were used as needed. The only complete whale bodies were different-sized miniatures that were filmed in a special tank designed by special-effects whiz Augie Lohman at Shepperton Studios. Likewise, all the shots of the whale's head were filmed indoors (as they couldn't make the jaws, eyes and other components work on the open sea). According to Morris, the "lost" whale was a 20-foot-high cylinder of the middle section which broke away from its tow line and floated away (he doesn't say if Peck was on board when the prop was lost), but he implies that it was the only whale "casualty" in the entire production.
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Also directed by John Huston




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Also released in 1956




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