Tag Archives: Ida Lupino

Edward G. Robinson is Wolf Larsen

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Edward G. Robinson on the set of THE SEA WOLF (1941), in which he plays the maniacal captain Wolf Larsen from the Jack London novel.

Among the many tales about ill-fated ocean voyages, obsessive and tyrannical sea captains are usually at the root of the trouble. Some of the more memorable ones include Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty, and Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny. But none of these misguided authority figures can match the sadism and brutality of Wolf Larsen, the megalomaniac captain of Jack London’s novel, The Sea Wolf, who was famously portrayed by Edward G. Robinson in a 1941 Warner Bros. production directed by Michael Curtiz.

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A Western Greek Tragedy

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By the 1950s, the popularity of the Western genre was in decline and Hollywood studios tried to revitalize the once box office proof formula by trying everything from Technicolor and Cinemascope visual enhancements to hybrid novelties such as 1954’s Red Garters (a musical with stylized sets) and 1959’s Curse of the Undead (featuring a vampire gunslinger) to topical approaches that reflected a growing interest in psychology such as The Furies [1950] and High Noon [1952]. Into the latter category falls The Halliday Brand [1957], one of the more intense but least well known of the adult Westerns being produced in that era.  Continue reading →