The Wreck of the Mary Deare
Directed by Michael Anderson 105 mins. (1959)
Gary Cooper – Gideon Patch
A disgraced merchant marine officer elects to stay aboard his sinking cargo ship in order to prove the vessel was deliberately scuttled and, as a result, vindicate his good name.
Also starring Charleton Heston, Michael Redgrave, Emlyn Williams, Cecil Parker, Virginia McKenna, Alexander Knox and Richard Harris.
Charlton Heston idolised Cooper and had no problem letting him take the lead role, he was impressed that in spite of his age and declining health he was able to do some of the underwater stunts himself.Based on the novel by Hammond Innes, published in 1956. Alfred Hitchcock and screenwriter Ernest Lehman considered adapting the novel but changed their minds and worked on North By Northwest instead.
Tagline - From the great suspense best seller about the ghostship Mary Deare!
Maria’s Notes
Not knowing what the next film my father was to do, our family was in the South of France on Cap d’Antibes and my mother, ever the adventurer, got the idea to hire a teacher and we all learned how to scuba dive. Of course, we did it all wrong – my mother and I foolishly and vainly did not want to get our hair wet – so we dove with our bathing caps on only to learn later we could have burst our eardrums!
But we loved the sport and back home took proper lessons from certified professional divers who then, after “graduation,” took us out on their boat to Catalina Island where we dove in the ocean swimming between the massive forests of kelp beds looking for groupers, sand sharks and Moray eels. My father loved it and one weekend we found ourselves a tourist attraction when the Marineland of the Pacific aquarium invited us to come and swim in their big tank which was home to hundreds of fish of all sizes enclosed in glass walls at every level so the visitors could look in and see Gary Cooper – wife and daughter – swimming and weaving our way among the giant turtles and Manta rays.
So when The The Wreck of the Mary Deare was presented to my father to do as a film with his old friend Charlton Heston, he jumped at it. It is a gripping story and it gave my father a chance to do his own stunt work and use his newfound skills underwater. Acting through a facemask and a breathing tube is a real challenge. He was able to do all his own shots though a little more difficult than falling off a horse.
Maria Cooper Janis