Customer Reviews

John Paul Jones [VHS]

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The only movie portrayal done to my knowledge of John Paul Jones. That alone makes it worth while for any American history fan. Robert Stack does a pretty good job as the man and soldier. The movie is fairly historically accurate with some "Hollywood artistic" liberty taken and a bit of swashbuckling too. An entertaining movie all in all.

Hollywood has certainly done much worse than this movie. John Paul Jones was a major naval figure in the American Revolution, though seagoing operations in that war were overshadowed by land operations. His life is covered with an acceptable degree of historical accuracy in this movie. (It appears to me that the script was probably based on Augustus C. Buell's 1900 two volume "biography". For the facts, trust Samuel Eliot Morison's unsurpassed 1959 biography of Jones.) The normal artistic liberties are taken without changing the overall story. The filming and color are quite good. However, it suffers from very stiff acting, particularly from Robert Stack. The VHS tape has also suffered the cutting room floor treatment by trimming a widescreen movie to fit the 4:3 TV screen. Worth seeing once, it might be wisest to either rent or check it out from the library.

It surprises me that so many terrible movies have been converted and released to a DVD format, while this excellent classic along with so many others have not for whatever reason.

Robert Stack is good as John Paul Jones. It is a better movie than Maltin's review suggests

I have just visited Portland and home he stayed in.read history of his@
Life and movie fairly close. Not the way he died but still interesting. Good copy.

It's always been Hollywood gospel that films about the American Revolution don't earn any money - hence there are few of them and "John Paul Jones" is one of these few. The film stars Robert Stack with a star studded cast including Bette Davis, Charles Coburn, Macdonald Carey, Bruce Cabot, Peter Cushing, Thomas Gomez, and Jean-Pierre Aumont.

One of the great things about a film like this is you get to see historical characters like Ben Franklin, Patrick Henry, George Washington, Catherine the Great, King Louis XVI, and Marie Antoinette.

Handsome Robert Stack (1919-2003) is best known from his Emmy winning performance in the TV series "The Untouchables" (1959-63), but he made dozens of films including "The Mortal Storm" (1940) and "To Be or Not to Be" (1942) which were two of the best pre war anti-Nazi films. Shortly after Stack enlisted in the Navy. He was nominated for an Oscar for "Written on the Wind" (1957)

Charles Coburn (1877-1961) plays Ben Franklin. He appeared in more than 50 films, from 1933 through 1962. He was nominated for an Oscar 3 times and won once ("The More the Merrier" in 1943). I remember him best as "Piggy" in "Gentlemen Prefer Blonds" (1953).This was Coburn's last film and he does his usual great job.

Thomas Gomez (1905-1971) was nominated for an Oscar for "Ride the Pink Horse" (1947). He put in good performances in nearly 100 films. I think his best role was in the film noir "Force of Evil" (1948) and as Coach Abe Saperstein in "The Harlem Globetrotters" (1951).

Bette Davis (1908-89) plays Catherine the Great. She appeared in nearly 100 films, was nominated for an Oscar 11 times and won twice ("Dangerous" in 1935 and "Jezebel" in 1939), nominated for an Emmy 4 times and won once ("Strangers" in 1979), 3 Golden Globe Nominations, and for "All About Eve" (1950) she won awards at Cannes, in Italy, and the New York Film Critics.

Macdonald Carey (1913-94) plays Patrick Henry. Carey is best known for his work on "Days of Our Lives" as Dr. Tom Horton (1965-89), but he did nearly 100 films.

This was the screen debut for Mia Farrow (1945) who's best known for her role in Rosemary's Baby (1968).

John Farrow (1904-63) directs. Farrow was the father of actress Mia Farrow with Margaret O'Sullivan (Jane from the Tarzan films). Farrow was twice nominated for an Oscar, winning for "Around the World in 80 Days" (1956) and nominated for "Wake Island" (1942).

Austrian composer Max Steiner (1888-1971) is responsible for the music. Between 1935 and 1956 he was nominated for an Oscar 19 times, and won for "Since You Went Away" (1944), "Now Voyager" (1942), and "The Informer" (1935). He was so well known that he appears on a 33 cent stamp (1999) along with Dimitri Tiomkin and Alfred Newman.

FWIW - Steiner worked on many scores for Bette Davis, but this film would be their last together.

In 1959 the big money makers were "Ben Hur", "Sleeping Beauty", "North by Northwest", "Some Like it Hot", and "Pillow Talk". The big Oscar winner was "Ben Hur" (Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor). Other notable films released that year include "Room at the Top", "The Diary of Anne Frank", "The 39 Steps", "The 400 Blows", "Anatomy of a Murder", and "The Last Angry Man".

The NY Times' Bosley Crowther said "once more, the talents and resources of a lot of people and a large studio, John Farrow, writer-director, and a considerable cast of minor stars have been put to the tiresome task of shaping a flow of ponderous pictorial tableaus through which a solemn masculine figure, more myth than man, parades."

My one and only favorite American Revolution film is John Ford's classic "Drums Along the Mohawk" (1939). Most of the rest, like "The Devil's Disciple" (1959) and "The Howards of Virginia" (1940) are merely OK and some, like The Patriot" (2000), are just plain silly. If you like Pre Revolution 18th Century American history, Michael Mann's breath-taking "Last of the Mohicans" (1992) is a great film from this period, as is King Vidor's "Northwest Passage" (1940).

There are so few films about the Revolution and none about John Paul Jones, so this otherwise mediocre film does bear watching.