It seems like every actress in Hollywood auditioned to be Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, but Paulette Goddard was supposedly the top contender until Vivian Leigh got the part. I suspect her loss was the primary reason she appears in 1942’s Reap the Wild Wind. Heck, it may be the only reason this bizarre mish-mash of genres exists.
Ostensibly, it is about the dangerous currents off Key West and rival salvage crews which make huge profits from rescuing the cargo of ships in imminent danger of sinking. Goddard has inherited one of these salvage firms following the death of her father. Raymond Massey runs the other, and he may actually have people planted on different ships to ensure they crash upon the reefs.
The latest ship to crash was captained by John Wayne, who was knocked unconscious at some point before the crash, though he can’t remember what caused it. He is employed by Walter Hampden, an elderly man who is likely to die soon and so the reins of the company will pass to the firm’s lawyer, Ray Milland. Wayne’s current situation is dire, as Hampden relieves him of command, putting him on one of the fleet’s worst vessels and busted down to first mate. He’s even made to take the model of his sunken vessel from where it is displayed in the company’s boardroom and put it under a table where apparently where the lost ships go.
Hanging over that table is a model of the Southern Cross, their first steamship. Wayne dreams of captaining that one day are looking increasingly unlikely. I find it difficult to conceive of a time when a steamship was cutting edge technology (steaming edge technology?), yet Milland wows the young women gathered around him at a soiree as he demonstrates another hot new invention: the match. I imagine the wheel had only been invented about five years earlier.
Goddard is also at this event, and I am surprised she was invited back after astounding guests at a previous gathering. When asked to “sing a sweet song of the Keys”, she instead sings what apparently is a bawdy shanty, though I didn’t hear anything that I think would cause offense to anybody in any age. Still, the reaction takes of the proper ladies around her are priceless, such as the one who is still filling her teacup as the brown liquid flows over the sides. When Goddard is asked to stop, she says a line that got the heartiest laugh from me, and that was, “But there are still twenty more verses!”
I was surprised I was engaged in this first act of the film, as costume drama is usually one of my least favorite genres. Alas, the picture will pile-on one plot contrivance after another, and even change genres, until I was very bored. There’s the love triangle between Goddard, Wayne and Milland. There are shifting alliances between them and Massey. There’s the subplot of Goddard’s sister (Susan Hayward) and Massey’s brother (Robert Preston). There’s an attempted shanghaiing of some of the good guys, to put them on a whaling vessel that will be out at sea for three years. The third act becomes a legal thriller, except it is far from thrilling. A fourth act has Wayne and Milland on a daring race to the hold of a sunken ship to retrieve a shawl. There’s a monkey, because of course there would be one.
Hardly anything gels while watching Reap the Wild Wind, though it is a fair amount of weird to make it appeal to some viewers. I don’t know what to think of Preston saying to Hayward that he wants to crush the life out of her, except he apparently means it as a term of endearment. And I never thought I would see Milland do ventriloquism to create the illusion his dog can talk, but I guess law school taught a variety of skills back then. Perhaps the weirdest thing was Goddard finally getting to channel some O’Hara energy, only for Louise Beavers (in the Hattie McDaniel role) to be the one who gets to say “Fiddle-dee-dee!” What a weird mess this is, the movie that wants to be Gone with the Windjammers.
Dir: Cecil B. DeMille
Starring John Wayne, Ray Milland, Paulette Goddard, Raymond Massey
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray