Welcome to "Saturday Night at the Movies".

I'm your host, Glenn Holland.

Tonight's film's the World War II submarine naval drama "Run Silent, Run Deep" released by United Artists in 1958.

The film was directed by Robert Wise from a screenplay by John Gay.

Based on the bestselling 1955 novel by Commander, later Captain Edward L. Beach, Jr. "Run Silent, Run Deep" stars Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster supported by Jack Warden, Brad Dexter, Don Rickles Nick Cravat, and Joe Moross.

The film opens in the Bungo Straits near the coast of Japan in 1942.

Commander PJ Richardson is skipper of a US Navy submarine harassing Japanese shipping.

When his sub is attacked and sunk by the Japanese destroyer Akikaze, Richardson and the few other survivors are left adrift.

A year later, Richardson is working a desk job at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands when he learns the Akikaze has recently sunk a fourth American submarine in the Bungo Straits.

Determined to return to active duty, Richardson lobbies the Navy Board to assign him to a new vessel.

Shortly afterwards, the submarine Nerka returns to Pearl Harbor after sea patrol.

The Nerka's captain was injured while at sea, and his executive officer Lieutenant James Bledsoe took command.

Bledsoe gained the respect and affection of the crew and they expect him to be named the Nerka's new captain.

When the command is given to Richardson instead, Bledsoe asked to be relieved of his duties as executive officer and assigned to another vessel.

Richardson refuses.

At sea, the crew is dismayed to learn that they're to patrol area seven, which includes the Bungo Straits.

Richardson works the crew hard with drills designed to improve the speed and efficiency of their attacks.

This only increases the crew's anxieties until Bledsoe informs them their orders required them to avoid the Bungo Straits.

When Richardson refuses to engage a Japanese submarine, the crew becomes suspicious of his motives and question his leadership.

But a successful attack on a Japanese tanker and destroyer rallies the crew until Richardson orders a change of course.

A change that will take the Nerka directly into the dangers of the Bungo Straits.

The submarine is arguably the only form of human transportation that was developed primarily with an eye towards military use.

The first practical military submersible ship, the Turtle, a one man vessel, was designed by an American David Bushnell.

In 1775, the Turtle was used in an unsuccessful attempt to attach a bomb to a British ship, HMS Eagle, during the Revolutionary War.

Many years later, in 1864 during the Civil War, the Confederate vessel H.L.

Hunley became the first submarine to sink an enemy ship, the USS Housatonic.

The ship was sunk using explosives at the end of a spar attached to the submarine's prowl, but the explosion also sank the Hunley and killed its crew.

Like other submarine vessels of their eras, both the Turtle and the Hunley were propelled by human muscle.

It was not until the development of practical mechanical engines that submarines slowly gained acceptance as potential warships.

By the beginning of the First World War, most submarines used diesel engines on the surface and batteries when submerged.

This, along with the development of self-propelled torpedoes, secured the place of submarines in naval warfare.

During World War I, German U-boats patrolled the waters of the British Isles attacking both merchant vessels and naval ships.

U-boats operated primarily on the surface, submerging to attack their targets.

One of the victims of German U-boat attacks was the passenger ship RMS Lusitania, sunk off the coast of Ireland in May, 1915.

The sinking of the Lusitania was instrumental in swinging American political opinion against the central powers.

When the German Imperial Navy implemented unrestricted use of U-boats to attack American shipping in 1917, the United States entered the war the allies' side.

By the beginning of the Second World War, vastly improved submarines with innovative electronic technology we're employed by both the Axis and the Allied powers in all theaters of the war at sea.

US Navy submarines were most active in the Pacific.

Although they accounted for only about 2% of the US Naval fleet, submarines destroyed over 30% of Imperial Japan's naval forces and over 60% of its merchant ships.

Commander Edward L. Beach Jr.'s 1955 novel, "Run Silent Run Deep" spent several months on the New York Times bestseller list.

United Artists purchased the film rights, the first time the company had acquired a property outright without a production deal already in place.

In the event, "Run Silent Run Deep" was produced by Harold Hecht, one of the partners of Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions.

The company was already responsible for earlier successful vehicles starring another partner, Burt Lancaster.

These star turns included "The Crimson Pirate" in 1952, "Vera Cruz" in 1954, "Trapeze" in 1956, and "Sweet Smell of Success" in 1957.

When scenerist John Gay began working on the screenplay, he rejected the rather complicated plot of Beach's novel, while keeping many of its characters and situations.

In later life, Captain Beach expressed disappointment with the movie.

He said it seemed the film company was only interested in his novel's title, and not its theme and plot.

At least one of the changes was made at Clark Gable's insistence.

He wanted it made clear that Commander Richardson was seriously ill before he handed over command to Lieutenant Bledsoe, so the audience wouldn't think Gable was playing the weaker character.

For its part, United Artists promoted "Run Silent Run Deep" as a story about a ship's captain obsessed with a nemesis like Ahab in Moby Dick, but also about conflict among the ship's officers like that between Charles Lawton's Captain Bly and Clark Gable's Fletcher Christian in MGMs 1935 version of "Mutiny on the Bounty".

As the credits indicate, the United States Navy made major contributions to the making of "Run Silent Run Deep".

According to an article in the Los Angeles Times in September, 1957, the Navy Department loaned the production more than half a million dollars' worth of instruments and equipment for the submarine interior sets used in the film, giving it a vital authenticity.

The exteriors of the Nerka were shot aboard the USS Redfish.

The Redfish had already been featured in Walt Disney's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" in 1954, and in the documentary television series, "The Silent Service" in 1957 and 58.

The Redfish was scrapped in 1969.

One of the more memorable characters in "Run Silent Run Deep" is Russo, the sailor who almost drowns when the Nerka begins to submerge while he's on deck tossing bags of garbage into the ocean.

Russo was played by Nick Cravat, an old friend of Burt Lancaster's who appeared in nine of his films.

Cravat, born Nicholas Cuccia in Brooklyn, New York, on January 11th, 1912, was short at five foot four inches, but reportedly strong as a bull.

He and Lancaster met when they were nine.

They learned acrobatics and acting at the Union Settlement in East Harlem.

In the early 30s, they formed an acrobatic act as Lang and Cravat, working with various circuses and in Vaudeville.

The act came to a reluctant end when Lancaster injured his hand in 1939, but they reunited when Lancaster began working in movies.

In the period pictures, "The Flame in the Arrow" in 1950 and "The Crimson Pirate" in 1952, Cravat played characters who were mute.

This was because he had a Brooklyn accent he just couldn't shake, an accent that was completely inappropriate for a film set in 12th century Lombardi or the 18th century Caribbean.

Fortunately, Cravat's accent was perfect for the character of Russo, and Cravat, along with Don Rickles as Quarter Master First Class Ruby at his motion picture debut, provides "Run Silent Run Deep" with some much needed comic relief.

Cravat also played mute parts on television, including the character Busted Luck in the Davy Crockett episodes of "Disneyland" in 1955, and Jacopo in all 39 episodes of "The Count of Monte Cristo" television series in 1956.

But he perhaps detained his greatest, although uncredited fame in popular culture, when he terrified airplane passenger William Shatner in the 1963 "Twilight Zone" episode, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet".

Yes, Nick Cravat was the Gremlin.

Please join us again next time for another "Saturday Night at the Movies".

I'm Glenn Holland.

Goodnight.