'Lights, Camera, Whaling!' A Look at Leviathans on Film

As movie genres go, the Hollywood Western is legendary in the American landscape and psyche. But it would seem that there was another kind of all-American profession that, for a time at least, had its own series of closeups on the silver screen.

We’re talking the whaling movie — perhaps not quite as fabled as the ubiquitous cowboy film of the mid-20th century, but nevertheless, every bit as adventuresome in terms of cinematic excitement filled with celluloid heroes who would pit themselves against the massive beasts of the sea.

The business of making movies about the business of hunting leviathans is the focus of “Lights, Camera, Whaling!” a new exhibition on view now through August at the Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum.

This is a show that the museum’s director Richard Doctorow has long envisioned creating. But it was the recent gift of a key set of items to the institution that turned the concept for the exhibit into reality.

“In the winter, a fellow called up out of the blue who wanted to donate the props from old Warner Brothers whaling movies,” explained Doctorow. “There were three or four Warner Brother whaling movies, before Hollywood understood how much cheaper it is to do a Western, and probably eight to 10 whaling movies over the years.

“The movies we focus on in this show are those that really depict whaling, not things like ‘Free Willie,’” he added.

The set of seven prop whaling tools mounted in a frame dominate the central exhibition space at the museum and, to the untrained eye, they are actually quite realistic (and lethal) looking — long, wooden lance-like poles with various sharp metal implements attached to the ends. These would have been the actual tools that were used by Gregory Peck when he portrayed Captain Ahab in the 1956 Warner Brothers film “Moby Dick” directed by John Huston.

“The man who donated them to us didn’t want them to end up on the wall of Red Lobster,” said Doctorow, explaining that studios periodically clear out their prop rooms to create more storage space. “If the movie houses kept everything, there’d be no room for anything. Now it’s common for them to get rid of everything right after filming. They had enormous warehouses of props. He picked up these lances at a sale.

“They are perfectly good and look great for a movie. If you know your whaling implements, you can tell, though, if you look at them,” said Doctorow, explaining that the prop department would have fabricated the tools based on photographs. “They’re not 100 percent accurate. There are giveaways for us whaling nerds.

“We have clips of eight whaling movies on view, two to three minutes per clip, so you’ll see these props in action,” he added. “We’ve also got some Hollywood behind-the-scenes gossip to spice things up.”

Among the whaling film gossip documented in the exhibition is the scandalous story behind “The Sea Beast,” a 1926 silent picture which starred John Barrymore as (who else?) Captain Ahab.

“Barrymore insisted that the female lead, Priscilla Bonner, be fired and replaced with his real life lover,” said Doctorow.

That replacement turned out to be film star Dolores Costello (aka “The Goddess of the Silent Screen”) whom Barrymore married in 1928. The couple’s son, John Drew Barrymore, was the father of current star Drew Barrymore.

“The reviewers said the movie was authentic, especially the love scenes, which they said Barrymore played with what could only be described as ‘boyish enthusiasm,’” laughed Doctorow. “Priscilla Bonner was fired and sued and won the case. Warner Brothers got great publicity for it.”

In addition to the prop tools, which have the starring role in the exhibition, the whaling film clips and the tales of gossip, also featured are posters, lobby cards, scripts, publicity stills and other objects related to whaling films produced by Hollywood as early as 1923 and as recently as 2016, when director Ron Howard made “In the Heart of the Sea,” a film about the Nantucket whaleship Essex, which, in 1820 was rammed and sunk in the Pacific by an angry sperm whale. The real life story of the Essex served as inspiration for Herman Melville’s novel “Moby-Dick” a few decades later.

When it comes to whaling, it seems that “Moby-Dick” was a perennially popular story to tell in film. While the Hollywood back lot and large swimming pools may have often been where these whaling scenes were recreated, there was at least one whaling film shot on the East Coast.

“The first one we feature was ‘Down to the Sea in Ships’ in 1923, and the director had a little problem finding funding out of Hollywood,” said Doctorow. “So the film was funded by the city of New Bedford [Massachusetts], which had been the greatest whaling city in America.

“In 1923, how do you get a whale on film? They hired a whaling crew and went out on an actual whaling voyage,” added Doctorow. “There were still some ships and enough crewman who went down to the Bahamas and they filmed on an actual whaling voyage. The press packet said the lead actor threw the harpoon, but then you don’t see who threw the harpoon hitting the whale.”

Eventually though, the era of whaling, like the industry itself, faded away on the silver screen, perhaps due to the difficulty of filming on the water when compared with the ease with which desert landscapes could be transformed into the Wild West for film shoots.

“I think the whaleman was an American icon in the late 1800s and early 1900s. By the 20th century, they were going extinct and there was some romanticism to it,” said Doctorow. “It really was a type of American rugged manly profession. What it didn’t do was stress the individualism that the cowboy movies seemed to glorify. On a ship with 30 or 35 men, you would work together as a crew. With a cowboy, it was just his horse and his six gun.”

“Lights, Camera, Whaling!” runs through the end of August at the Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum, 200 Main Street, Sag Harbor. On Saturday, June 24, from 5 to 7 p.m. the museum hosts a “Calm Before the Storm” cocktail party with drinks, a live jazz band, auction items and more. Tickets are $50 ($40 for members) and all proceeds benefit the museum. For more information, visit sagharborwhalingmuseum.org.