Thunder Bay

What starts off as a cute conman buddy movie turns into an unexpected dual romance as the pals find girls in a small fishing town, and a locals-against-outsiders fight. James Stewart and Dan Duryea, frequent costars, have great chemistry together as friends who are down on their luck. With failures on their resume and nothing but slick tongues, they con their way into a car ride into town, renting a boat for the day, and hosting a business meeting with an important investor - all without paying. Joanne Dru is skeptical, Gilbert Roland is jealous, Marcia Henderson is interested, and Jay C. Flippen believes in their vision: underwater off-shore drilling.

If you like the actual story of the drilling and the local fisherman trying to sabotage their plans, you'll really enjoy Thunder Bay. I was more interested in the love stories, and I was still happy. Dan Duryea usually plays slimy villains, so I can only imagine what a treat it was for him to be the funny comic sidekick with an eye for the ladies. I've never seen him get to smooch someone after exclaiming, "Oh darling!" It's just adorable. If this is the first movie you see of his, you probably won't be able to imagine him playing a bad guy in his other movies.

From the director/actor team that brought us many of the great westerns of the 1950s, Thunder Bay teams Anthony Mann and James Stewart in what could easily be called a modern western. Stewart plays Steve Martin, an oil driller with a dream. His goal is to build an off-shore drill in the Gulf of Mexico. He receives the financial backing of oil tycoon Kermit MacDonald (Jay C. Flippen) and begins work.

He sets out from a small fishing community that has been on hard times lately. They are leery of Stewart and his partner Johnny Gambi (Dan Duryea) at first, and become more so when the two start blasting in the middle of their shrimp beds. To make matters worse, Johnny falls in love with a local girl who is already engaged to one of the fisherman.

Tension builds as the fishermen continue to have bad luck and the drill progresses. One disgruntled fisherman attempts to blow up the drill platform during the middle of a hurricane. Stewart, who had stayed on the platform to see how it would withstand the storm, catches him just in time to save it. A slippery fight ensues, during which the fisherman and Stewart fight not only each other, but a constant onslaught of water. As in the typical western, the hero (Stewart) wins and the villain dies.

The fight scene is one that dates the film. The special effects seem very archaic in wake of such recent films as Titanic and The Perfect Storm. Other than that, the film presents an interesting story on what, at the time, was a very taboo subject.

Aware of the controversy the film would stir-up, the film was carefully crafted to prove that two industries could exist side by side. As the fishermen resolve to destroy the well, Stewart discovers that his well has uncovered a new bed a shrimp. When the fishermen learn this they decide that the well is indeed an asset to their community and all live happily ever after.

As usual Stewart steals the film. His acting is subtle and believable. The simple story did not push him as an actor, but he is properly harried, tough and laconic. Overall this is an interesting film, enhanced by the beautiful location shots filmed in Technicolor by William Daniels. Truly, an intriguing and different take on the western genre.

The posted comment about wanting to see the "widescreen" version needs to be addressed.

As the listing for the film indicates, Thunder Bay was filmed with a standard Academy ratio of 1.37x1. That was the way it was meant to be shown. Universal then chopped off the top and bottom of the image - totally destroying the spatial integrity of the image - to claim that it was a "widescreen" film.

It must have looked awful. Count yourself lucky you don't get to see it.

(This horrible trick was also tried for the mid 1960s reissue for Gone With the Wind, where it was blown up to 70mm and released in a 2.35x1 ratio, which was just awful.)

Thunder Bay is directed by Anthony Mann and written by Gil Doud and George W. George. It stars James Stewart, Joanne Dru, Dan Duryea, Gilbert Roland and Jay C. Flippen. Music is by Frank Skinner and cinematography by William H. Daniels.

Offshore oil drillers set up base at Port Felicity, Louisiana and find the town's shrimpers are not at all happy about this threat to their livelihood. Conflict and affairs of the heart do follow.

One of the eight films that James Stewart and Anthony Mann made together, Thunder Bay was relevant in topicality upon its release, and remains so today. Whilst lacking the psychological smarts that the duo's Western productions had, it's a handsome production with the expected qualities in front of and behind the cameras. There's a lot of talky passages, which given the subject matter pulsing away at the core is understandable, but Mann ensures that action and suspense is never far away. It all builds to a crescendo, with loose ends and quibbles conveniently tied up in a Hollywood bow, but such is the skills of actors and director it rounds out as good and thorough entertainment. 7/10

Thunder Bay is an anomaly, a pedantic film on a subject seldom dealt with in the movies, the conflict between businessmen, whose ambitions will cause great change in the local landscape, and the locals, who want things to remain as they are. In this case it's oil drillers versus shrimp fisherman in the Louisiana of the early 1950's. The conflict at times seems almost Marxian, with James Stewart's hardheaded, no-nonsense outsider going up against ragin' Cajun Gilbert Roland, a far more charming and sympathetic figure. Rather than shy away from class conflict, the movie confronts the issue repeatedly, in a variety of ways, and builds up a good deal of tension along the way, as Stewart's compulsive, oil drilling loner, increasingly isolated, takes on the entire community.

There's a good deal of fifties sociology here, with the modern, inner-directed Stewart against the tradition-centered fishing people. Neither side understands the other, as one can well see how these local folks would view Stewart as an uncaring and forbidding figure, the embodiment of alien, big city values. On the other hand these people are a rough and tumble lot, uneducated, clannish and utterly without curiosity. It's easy to see how an educated man might look down on them. There's a good deal of action along the way, and some fist-fights. At a time when many Americans still thought of themselves in terms of class, and with the Depression fresh in everyone's minds, it was rather bold of director Anthony Mann to take on this subject from a middle of the road, basically Republican (but not right wing) perspective. In this respect the movie, which came out in the first year of the Eisenhower administration, heralded a new era of compromise, with the promise of better things yet to come. As to which side is right, well, you be the judge. I'm still thinking this over.