***SPOILERS*** Crash landing their plane in the far out South Pacific during a bombing run on the Japanese fleet the two surviving pilot and navigator Let. Alec Brook & Let. Joe Moore, Van Johnson & Cameron Mitchell, find themselves low on water and on the verge of dying of dehydration if their not found on time. It's during that time in waiting and hoping to be rescued that Alec goes into this long narrative, coupled with an almost hour long flashback, about this mythical island High Barbaree in the South Pacific that his uncle Thad Vail, Thomas Mitchell, always told him about until it came out of his ears. As luck would have it, and Brooke & Moore needed all the luck they can get, that island is supposed to be in the vicinity where their plane, ironically also named "High Barbaree",crash landed!
We get to see the life and times as well as loves of young and later grown up Alex Brooke in a number of flashbacks that mostly take place in his hometown Westview Iowa. it was in Westview that Alec met little Nancy Fraser, June Allyson, whom he planned, at the age of 10,to marry when the two grew up. As it turned Nancy and her parents moved to the state of Montana and Alec soon lost track of her. Now, still in flashback, Alec has become the vice president of an aircraft company and is engaged to the boss' classy and beautiful daughter Diana Case, played by the drop dead gorgeous Marilyn Maxwell, when what seems like out of nowhere Nancy, now a navy nurse, pops back into his life! You can just imagine what major complications that brought into poor, in choosing between Nancy & Diana, Alec's life.
Saved by the bell or the attack on Pearl Harbor Alec now in the Navy fighting the Japs, and not sitting behind a desk, seemed to have dropped Diana,what a jerk, and is now free to marry his long lost love Nancy! But as things or fate turned out Nancy dropped him in return and is now engaged to marry this navy man that she met while on duty in Honolulu! So where does the mythical island of High Barbaree fit into all this?
****SPOILERS**** Well between all the BS that we and Joe go through listening to Alec story about the mythical island of High Barbaree it did served it's purpose in keeping the two clinging to life in hoping they'd find it up until help finally arrived! It's there in a dream sequence at High Barbaree that Alec, Joe by then had died from thirst and high fever, met this smiling Polynesian Chieftain Tangaror, played by native Hawaiian actor Al Kikume, who guided a shocked as well as happy Alec not only onto the island of mystery but to his hometown of Westview Iowa as well! The very predictable ending which shall remain nameless had all the qualities and trappings of your typical and phony Hollywood feel good happy ending! And it was that ending as well as Alec doing the brainless as well as unthinkable by dumping Diana for Nancy , which was like trading in a RollsRoyce for a Volkswagen, that made to film not all that believable to begin, or end, with.
We get to see the life and times as well as loves of young and later grown up Alex Brooke in a number of flashbacks that mostly take place in his hometown Westview Iowa. it was in Westview that Alec met little Nancy Fraser, June Allyson, whom he planned, at the age of 10,to marry when the two grew up. As it turned Nancy and her parents moved to the state of Montana and Alec soon lost track of her. Now, still in flashback, Alec has become the vice president of an aircraft company and is engaged to the boss' classy and beautiful daughter Diana Case, played by the drop dead gorgeous Marilyn Maxwell, when what seems like out of nowhere Nancy, now a navy nurse, pops back into his life! You can just imagine what major complications that brought into poor, in choosing between Nancy & Diana, Alec's life.
Saved by the bell or the attack on Pearl Harbor Alec now in the Navy fighting the Japs, and not sitting behind a desk, seemed to have dropped Diana,what a jerk, and is now free to marry his long lost love Nancy! But as things or fate turned out Nancy dropped him in return and is now engaged to marry this navy man that she met while on duty in Honolulu! So where does the mythical island of High Barbaree fit into all this?
****SPOILERS**** Well between all the BS that we and Joe go through listening to Alec story about the mythical island of High Barbaree it did served it's purpose in keeping the two clinging to life in hoping they'd find it up until help finally arrived! It's there in a dream sequence at High Barbaree that Alec, Joe by then had died from thirst and high fever, met this smiling Polynesian Chieftain Tangaror, played by native Hawaiian actor Al Kikume, who guided a shocked as well as happy Alec not only onto the island of mystery but to his hometown of Westview Iowa as well! The very predictable ending which shall remain nameless had all the qualities and trappings of your typical and phony Hollywood feel good happy ending! And it was that ending as well as Alec doing the brainless as well as unthinkable by dumping Diana for Nancy , which was like trading in a RollsRoyce for a Volkswagen, that made to film not all that believable to begin, or end, with.