Brown on Resolution (film)

In 1893, Betty Brown meets a debonair young naval officer, falls in love with him and becomes pregnant. She conceals her pregnancy from him, and he rejoins his ship. She gives birth to a boy, Albert Brown, and raises him. He joins the navy as soon as he is old enough.

Brown's ship is posted to the Pacific during the First World War. He is marooned on the remote Galápagos island of Resolution when the cruiser he is serving on, HMS Rutland, is sunk. A German battlecruiser (the fictitious SMS Zeithen[1]) takes him prisoner whilst it defeats an inferior British force. It then suffers damage in a second encounter and its captain plans to pull into an isolated Pacific anchorage to try to repair the vessel. There, the resourceful Brown escapes, steals a rifle and a small amount of ammunition, and makes his way ashore.

The German vessel's main battery cannot be brought to bear on Brown, and he is able to pick off exposed crewmen trying to repair its punctured hull plates. The anchorage is an impenetrable tangle of scrub and thorn bushes, making it difficult for shore parties to run him to ground.

Brown is eventually killed by a German shot, never learning that his actions delayed the repairs long enough for the raider's British pursuers to catch up and destroy it. The German captain, now a prisoner, reveals who delayed him. The British erect a cross on the highest point on the island to commemorate him, and the commander of the British ship discovers that Brown was his illegitimate son.

• Betty Balfour – Elizabeth Brown
• John Mills – Albert Brown
• Barry MacKay – Lt. Somerville
• Jimmy Hanley – Ginger
• Howard Marion-Crawford – Max
• H. G. Stoker – Captain Holt
• Percy Walsh – Kapitan von Lutz
• George Merritt – William Brown
• Cyril Smith – William Brown, Jr.

In July 1933 Gaumont British announced they would make a film of the novel.[2] Production was delayed as the studio negotiated with the Admiralty for co operation.[3] In November the studio announced it would make the film as part of their next line up of projects.[4] In January 1934 Walter Forde was announced as director.[5]

By June 1934 the film had still not been made. The Admiralty had given some indication they would co operate but William Fisher, Commander of the Mediterranean Fleet, was unhappy at the thought of British sailors playing Germans in the film, thinking it would be bad for morale.[6]

In July Gaumont announced the role of the mother would be played by Betty Balfour, a silent film star who had recently made a comeback in Evergreen.[7]

In October the Admiralty agreed to cooperate.[8] The "German raider Zeithen" was played by British C-class cruiser HMS Curacoa; "Second-class cruiser HMS Rutland" was played by destroyer leader HMS Broke, and "Armoured Cruiser HMS Leopard" by the new Leander-class cruiser HMS Neptune (29.31.53). This was the first time that the Royal Navy had co-operated with a film company to this extent (though Sergei Eisenstein had had the use of Soviet Russian naval vessels for his film Battleship Potemkin in 1925).

The battleship Iron Duke would be filmed at Portsmouth; the Curacoa at Mullion Cove Cornwall; the cruiser Neptune at Invergordon and at sea; Broke and the flotilla would be shot at sea. The Admiralty also allowed filming at the Gunnery School, Whale Island and the Boys Training Establishment at Gosport. Filming began in Portsmouth. John Mills, who had been in Britannia of Billingsgate was cast in the lead. His friend was played by Jimmy Hanley.[9] Studio filming took place at Shepherd's Bush.[10]

The cast included war hero Henry Hugh Gordon Stoker. He had been in a production of Journey's End with Mills.[11]

At one stage the title of the film was going to be "Forever England" based on a line from the Rupert Brooke poem "The Soldier". It was feared that "Brown on Resolution" might be too confusing. But this was the title eventually used.[12]

The film was shown privately to the King of England.[13]

The New York Times called it "good hearty entertainment in the Rover Boy tradition."[14]

• Brown on Resolution on IMDb
• Brown on Resolution at AllMovie