One day last week I found myself viewing the dvd of a little known film version of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd (1962).  Coincidentally, that Tuesday, November 11th was Veteran’s Day. It also happened to be the 99th anniversary of the birth date of a superb and too little appreciated actor, Robert Ryan. Mr. Ryan appears in Billy Budd as Master-at-Arms John Claggart, a character who is often described as the personification of evil. Explaining his demeanor to an officer, Ryan, in character, says defiantly “I am what I am and what the world has made me.”

His opposite was played by an inexperienced yet charismatic 23 year old son of a tugboat worker, Terence Stamp. The angelic looking actor was, after an interview for the part in which he did little but stammer, making his film debut in this movie playing the lead, Billy Budd. The film was co-written by Peter Ustinov (with DeWitt Bodeen), and Ustinov also produced, directed and acted in the movie, giving a subtle performance as a ship’s captain caught in the middle of an impossible situation.

Despite the note of rollicking adventure on the high seas signaled by the amusing poster at top left, this engrossing black and white film has few cinematic ruffles and flourishes, but concentrates on the story of a ship in wartime, some of the men on her, and the events of a few days. Even the credits are startlingly spare, with each actor identifying their character’s name as their actual name appears briefly on screen.

The story, set in 1797, begins with a British merchant ship, (with the bold name of “The Rights of Man”), as it is being boarded forcibly by a British war ship looking for sailors to impress into service. A fair haired young sailor, (Stamp) is spotted aloft. He obediently goes with the Naval officer, for despite his rootless beginnings, (he cheerfully identifies himself as a “bastard” found in a silk-lined basket as a baby), he has a gentle, amenable nature which helps him to adapt quickly to life in the  British Navy on the Man-o-War. Expressing no resentment or rebellion despite this abrupt turn of events, the sailor’s pleasing nature soon makes him a favorite of his mates and the officers who observe him, except for the Master-of-Arms, played by Robert Ryan. The poisonous atmosphere of the ship, filled with other impressed sailors who are brutalized daily for the smallest infraction, is heightened by the recent news of mutinies that have occurred on other Royal Navy ships, making the need for a brutal enforcer of the regulations seem more necessary to the Captain and the officers, despite their revulsion and distrust of John Claggart (Ryan). Though Ryan‘s relationship with the officers is strained, their fear of their own men, and his effectiveness in enforcing order makes Claggart, in some ways, the true arbiter of power on board. When Billy is questioned after an act of compassion required him to leave his post to try to save a sick fellow sailor who was browbeaten into climbing the mast, he tells the truth, contradicting Master Claggart’s version of the incident in front of the officers and men, and earning him Claggart’s enmity.

Interestingly, while this film is in the “seamlessly well made film” style of that period, the camera lingers on Terence Stamp‘s blond, blue eyed face and graceful figure repeatedly as he climbs the mast, speaks to his mates, or observes life around him. In contrast to this,  Ustinov chooses most often to only show part of Ryan‘s face and long frame, shooting him from the back and the side, often only choosing to allow a foot or the crop he carries to be visible in a close-up. The longest time that Claggart’s face is shown is during a long, quiet scene between the unwitting Billy and his nemesis.

The demise of the naive and innocent Billy Budd, called a “barbarian” by Melville in the sense that he fits the romantic, philosophical ideal of a benevolent “child of nature”, comes in part because Ryan‘s character is galled and threatened by the younger, beloved man’s innocence of heart. The inevitability of Billy’s end is well illustrated in a long scene at night between the Billy and Claggart, (the true barbarian in the story) on deck late one seemingly peaceful night. In the dim light, with the guileless Billy at his most tenderly friendly, for just a moment, Claggart lets his guard down. Photographed by cinematographer Robert Krasker (of Brief Encounter, The Third Man, and El Cid fame) in black and white, Terence Stamp‘s androgynous, unself-conscious manner during this scene suggests such unworldliness that even Ryan‘s Claggart is charmed, saying mockingly, after Billy has asked permission to stay on deck awhile, that “I suppose the handsome sailor may do many things forbidden to his mess-mates.”

The boy’s gentle small talk disarms even the bristling Claggart. As he almost admits his terrible loneliness while speaking with the boy for just a few moments before violently ordering the boy to “get away”, Ryan‘s expressive face maps a lifetime of  the man’s sorrow and pain that have made him the “monster” that the unwitting boy is beguiling. Claggart seems to be confessing some dark knowledge to the uncomprehending, gentle young sailor when he mockingly upbraids the sailor, with the acidic observation that  “The sea is calm you said. Peaceful. Calm above, but below a world of gliding monsters preying on their fellows. Murderers, all of them. Only the strongest teeth survive. And who’s to tell me it’s any different here on board, or yonder on dry land?”

Terence Stamp later recalled that this “was a long scene, and in fact it was a scene that Ustinov used for the test, so I had done the scene in the film test. And when we came to shooting it, Robert Krasker, who was the most brilliant, in my opinion, black-and-white cameraman who did The Third Man (dir. Carol Reed), he lit it for one take, and I think it was between 7 and 9 minutes. It was just one take.”

The next day, more determined than ever to destroy this man who sees into him without comprehending the depth of his malice, Claggart accuses Budd of conspiracy to mutiny. Billy, played with great purity and simplicity by Stamp, is unable to speak without stammering when he is confronted by evil or stress. Under the duress of Ryan‘s accusation in the captain’s quarters, he tries to speak, encouraged by Ustinov‘s patient captain. Claggart, whose hectoring tone unnervess the boy more, finally strikes the Master-at-Arms who dies after striking his head when falling backward. Significantly, Claggart dies with an inscrutable smile on his lips, knowing he has destroyed Billy as well, ( I suspect that this may have been an addition of Robert Ryan‘s to the role since it is not in the original story).

The film draws to a tragic end with Billy Budd receiving a drumhead trial for murder conducted by the sympathetic Captain Vere (Ustinov) and his officers (played by solid actors Paul Rogers, John Neville, and David McCallum). In one of his last roles, veteran actor Melvyn Douglas, as Dansker, the pious, observant old sailmaker on the ship,  has a memorable scene in which he is called to testify about his knowledge of the alleged conspiracy. Without being told, he comprehends the severity of the charge against Billy and “the long shadow” cast by Claggart over the ship, admitting his own culpability in letting his fear overwhelm him. Despite the fact that the officers of the court wish to acquit him, for reasons of military order more than justice, and to prevent a possible mutiny, under pressure from the conflicted captain, they convict Budd of murder, and he is sentenced to death.

Just as he is about to be hung, in full sight of his shipmates who are delighted one minute to learn of Claggart’s death and outraged to think he might die for it, Billy, with a look of beatific peace and joy, cries out “God bless, Captain Vere!” Ustinov, in a wonderful moment, tries to control his emotions, but is overwhelmed and turns his back on his men and his duty. In a deviation from the story, the ship is just then attacked by a French ship. With the crew angered and shocked by what has just occurred on board, they are at first reluctant to “beat to quarters” to defend the ship, but after one sailor cries “Let’s punish the French for coming too late,” they take up their stations, though the film quickly comes to an end that seems to indicate that Captain Vere and the ship itself is destroyed as well.  Melville, whose slow unfolding of tragedies in his writing might have found only this sequence too modern for his taste.

While a critical success, this film may have failed at the box office because it premiered around the same time as the disastrous remake of Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) with Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard and another critically panned British movie with Alec Guinness and Dirk Bogarde on the bounding main, called Damn the Defiant (1962). The multi-talented Ustinov later reflected on the fate of this, perhaps his most heartfelt work during his 60 year entertainment career, when he wrote that the real trouble began for Billy Budd after shooting had stopped. It was then that “Allied Artists, who had financed the film, began looking for a happy ending.” The British distributors suggested that the movie “should be livened up by stock footage from various pirate films. The parent company sent me a cutter from Hollywood to show me how to make the movie more commercial. The ideas were too awful to contemplate.”  Peter Ustinov worked for some time with the censors to get them to allow the movie, which included two discreetly photographed floggings and an unjust hanging, to be shown without what was then a deadly X rating. He was cheered to see the first reviews in London and the U.S.. The film drew kudos from critics, and the director, who also appeared as Captain Vere in Billy Budd, (since one else would play the role for the miniscule fee offered), hopefully approached the New York director of publicity with the “splendid review of that most difficult and influential of magazines, Time.” The hardened flack took one look and said, with dismay, “Oh Jesus, don’t say we got a good notice in Time magazine. That’s the kiss of death.” It’s also possible that the distributors and publicity people might have been flummoxed by the unexpected seriousness of this work from the usually facetious Ustinov.

The gifted Peter Ustinov is probably best remembered for his gifts as a mimic, and his endlessly amusing turns on talk shows and in movies made him a memorably diverting entertainer, winning him fame and two Oscars; one for his scene-stealing slave merchant opposite Laurence Olivier and Charles Laughton in Spartacus (1961) and for his fumbling thief in Topkapi (1964). The truth was that with his surfeit of gifts as a playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and director of operas, as well as a humanitarian who worked with children’s charities, (notably UNICEF, a group for whom he worked for well over 30 years), it is primarily as an actor that he is remembered, and unfortunately not always for the best of movies. That’s a shame, since the issue of a dvd of Billy Budd (1962) may have been this self-described aging wunderkind’s attempt to be taken seriously.

I wonder if any of the people involved in marketing this movie for Ustinov and Company ever bothered to sit down and read Melville‘s novella? Set in 1797, Billy Budd was Herman Melville‘s last, unfinished work before his death in 1891. The story, which was rediscovered by scholars in 1924, has repeatedly inspired films, plays, television programs, ballets and operas, (notably the opera by Benjamin Britten).  This thought-provoking, densely written tale invites many interpretations, and can be seen as simply a courtroom drama during the period of the French Revolutionary Wars, an illustration of the distinction between justice and the law,  the inevitable warping of human nature in a hierarchical all male environment under constant stress, a homo-erotic love story , simply good versus evil, or the inexplicable way in which life comes and goes.

The movie, nevertheless, went on to garner an Oscar nomination for Terence Stamp as Best Actor in a Supporting Role and five nominations from BAFTA, including one for Robert Ryan as Best Foreign Actor. Ryan had last received an Academy Award nomination in the same category as Stamp when he appeared in his breakthrough role in Crossfire (1947).  Watching Billy Budd today, it is stunning that Ryan‘s brilliant work in this movie could have been bypassed in favor of recognizing the Best Supporting Actors Victor Buono in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane or Telly Savalas in Birdman of Alcatraz. I like both those actors, and was very impressed with Terence Stamp‘s moving simplicity as Melville’s Christ-like “Handsome Sailor”, (who also deserved his nomination). Yet Ryan, who, as a movie veteran, may have seemed over-familiar to Academy voters back then, found a way to convey his character’s pained frustration and malevolence without losing sight of his character’s undeniable humanity or his essential solitude. We are reminded of this by his unexpected tenderness in the deck scene at night, and the way that he set his mouth when lording it over his charges, as well as a pivotal scene between the Captain and Claggart. Ustinov‘s character only knows that Claggart joined the Navy to avoid prison, and finds the Master-at-Arms as mysterious as he does gentle Billy Budd. He probes Claggart after the insolent man sadistically states that a man who has been sentenced to receive 10 lashes by the captain deserves 100, “since the infraction occurred during wartime action.” Captain Vere asks Claggart if he lives “without hope?” Pausing for a moment, Claggart says simply and with finality “I live.” Long after the movie ended, the chilling, matter of fact way that Ryan said that line stayed with me. As with so many of his roles, he never compromised his strong characterizations in order to make the audience like him.

According to the memories of his daughter Lisa Ryan, her father “was a Melville fanatic, and made a point of reading Moby Dick every couple of years.” Repeatedly cast in roles that required him to play variations on tough guy characters since he rose to acting prominence in the 1940s, and often filmed in exceedingly bleak locations, Ryan sought out the part of the sadistic Claggart. During a lull in his career, the actor, who also might have made a magnificent Ahab in Moby Dick, jumped at the chance to bring his finely honed skills to explore the alienation, isolation, and loneliness in a work of Melville’s that he knew well. Despite the fact that he did not have an English accent in a largely British cast, Robert Ryan is said to have approached Ustinov for the part. The director, who called Billy Budd, his best film, admired Ryan for agreeing to take the part, filling the screen with his “massive and wicked presence.” Working with Robert Ryan was fairly daunting for Terence Stamp as well.  On the chatty commentary track of the dvd of this film, Stamp described Ryan as being “wonderful to him when they first met in London at the overwhelming press conference announcing the cast for the film. While on location, however, he described how Ryan “did him a favor that [Stamp] only understood much later, after the production was over.” He kept the young actor at arm’s length, remaining aloof, allowing some of that distance to seep into the interplay between them on camera.

Despite his exceptionally fine characterization in Billy Budd, a run of mediocre roles followed for a time, usually consisting of looking authoritatively militaristic, Ryan found himself asked to be in a new biblical flick.  No wonder, after finding himself startled to be asked to play John the Baptist instead of Judas in a new Hollywood production, King of Kings in the early ’60s,  Ryan had voiced a small hope that he might be allowed “to shed my history of being perhaps the most hated actor in Hollywood by audiences.” Eventually, a few more fine movie roles came his way, notably in The Professionals, The Wild Bunch, and his great work in his last film, The Iceman Cometh.

Years after the production of Billy Budd, the friendships that Robert Ryan had formed with British actors John Neville and Paul Rogers on the set of Billy Budd bore further fruit. Having impressed the Englishmen with his knowledge of Shakespeare and love of the stage at the time, in 1967, Ryan contacted John Neville, who was then artistic director of the Nottingham Playhouse.  Ryan proposed that–for once–an Irish actor should play in Eugene O’Neill’s dark tragedy Long Day’s Journey Into Night in the UK. He was drawn to the play, he said, because “[t]hese are the people I came from, so I understand them.”  He also proposed to further challenge himself with a production of Othello, and both plays were performed in a three month period, during which the famous movie star earned approximately $140 a week (which he is said to have given to his dresser), lost 28 pounds and found little time to do much other than eat, work and sleep. One night, after six curtain calls for Othello, he explained to a listener backstage that “[t]here isn’t anyplace in the States where you can do this kind of work. If I had tried to do this in America, it would take eight lawyers, five accountants, and six tax men. This way, all I needed was a work permit.” Winking at the listener, he added, “I came here for me and me alone.”

Just prior to taking the role in Peter Ustinov‘s production of Billy Budd, the actor had rediscovered how much he enjoyed the more fulfilling roles he’d found on stage, such as his part in Coriolanus in the early fifties in New York, and particularly in a production of Murder in the Cathedral in Los Angeles and in the American Shakespeare Festival production of Antony and Cleopatra (with Katharine Hepburn as the Queen of the Nile to his Marc Antony) in the early 1960s.

Today, those of us who cherish what has now come to be known as film noirs inevitably think of Robert Ryan as an actor of soaring talent who plumbed the heart of darkness in emblematic roles as a shell-shocked veteran whose vicious Anti-Semitism overwhelms him in Crossfire, the relentless avenging angel with a limp in Act Of Violence, a fighter on the skids in The Set-Up, a violent cop whose soul is corroded by his work in On Dangerous Ground, another disturbed veteran in Beware, My Lovely, and, once again, a bigot in Odds Against Tomorrow.

The fact that he played these roles so well completely belied the fact that Ryan was an outspoken liberal who simultaneously managed to be very good friends with his occasional co-star and political opposite, John Wayne. More to the point, despite the narrow range of roles that seemed to box him in, Robert Ryan was also an artist.

According to a conversation I had a chance to have with his clear-eyed daughter Lisa Ryan, her father didn’t “actively [seek] out those [dark] roles, he just happened to be really good at them, for whatever reason, and then sort of got typecast. I know he would have loved to have had the chance to play more good guys, more noble characters, maybe even a romantic lead–which I guess he got to do early on in his career a few times–but he didn’t get that opportunity too often. I think the parts he played have turned out, from the perspective of 2008, to be a lot more interesting than the parts he wanted back in the 1950′s. His characters seem to ‘wear well’…they don’t seem dated to me. I just wish he’d lived long enough to enjoy some of the recognition he’s getting now! He would be amazed that Film Noir is such a big deal  60 years later. I think he’d be totally baffled” by the kind of praise he would have encountered today. He might have been “puzzled, considering the the scant attention that he did receive during his lifetime.”

Lisa recalls a time when her father and mother were visiting Paris. When some film students spotted the striking actor on the street, they literally “got down on their knees, on the sidewalk, in front of my Dad, bowing down to him as if he were some religious figure. My Dad’s comment reportedly was: “What the f—- is WRONG with these French people? Are they all INSANE?”

Not insane, surely, but appreciative of a great actor in need of celebration.

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Please click here to check on upcoming Robert Ryan films on TCM.

Sources:

Jarlett, Franklin S., Robert Ryan: A Biography and Critical Filmography, McFarland, 1997.
Ustinov, Peter, Dear Me, Atlantic-Little Brown and Company, 1977.

Special Thanks to Lisa Ryan for her generous permission to quote her.

that we should take seriously” “It is our responsibilities, not ourselves,
that we should take seriously”