Trivia for
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

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• MGM wanted Cary Grant to play Byam, but Grant was under contract to Paramount, which refused to release him.
  
  
• 2nd unit assistant cameraman Glenn Strong died when a barge with 55 crewmen and staff members capsized while shooting exterior scenes.
  
  
• Charles Laughton, playing William Bligh, who performed one of the world's greatest feats of navigation after having been cast adrift at sea by the Bounty mutineers, was in reality terrified of the ocean and was violently seasick throughout most of the filming.
  
  

• Clark Gable had to shave off his trademark mustache for this film for historical accuracy. Mustaches were not allowed in the British Navy during the time the story takes place.
  
  
• Actor James Cagney was sailing his boat off of Catalina Island, California, and passed the area where the film's crew was shooting aboard the Bounty replica. Cagney called to director Frank Lloyd, an old friend, and said that he was on vacation and could use a couple of bucks, and asked if Lloyd had any work for him. Lloyd put him into a sailor's uniform, and Cagney spent the rest of the day as an extra playing a sailor aboard the Bounty.
  
  
• An additional tragedy nearly occurred during filming when an 18-foot replica of the Bounty with two crewmen aboard separated from its tow and was adrift for two days before being found by a search party.
  
  
• Wallace Beery turned down the role of Capt Bligh because he didn't like Clark Gable and didn't want to be stuck on a long location shoot with him.
  
  
• The only film in Oscar history that had three nominees for Best Actor: Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, and Franchot Tone. They all lost to Victor McLaglen for The Informer (1935), the only nominee not in this film.
  
  
• Irving Thalberg cast Clark Gable and Charles Laughton together in the hope that they would hate each other, making their on screen sparring more lifelike. He knew that Gable, a notorious homophobe, would not care for Laughton's overt homosexuality and would feel inferior to the RADA-trained Shakesperaean actor. Relations between the two stars broke down completely after Laughton brought his boyfriend to the island.
  
  
• The last winner of Best Picture Oscar that won no other Oscars.
  
  
• Clark Gable was disappointed when Franchot Tone was cast as Byam. The two actors had been bitter rivals for the affections of Joan Crawford, and did not like each other at all.
  
  
• Franchot Tone's role was originally intended for Robert Montgomery.
  
  
• The "Pacific Queen" shown in this film is actually a 19th-century ship, originally called the "Balclutha" (although later renamed the "Star of Alaska"). This ship, renamed to its original "Balclutha", can now be found at the Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco as part of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.
  
  
• Years later, in a conversation with playwright George S. Kaufman, Charles Laughton remarked that he had given such a good performance in this film because he came from a long line of seafarers. Referring to Laughton's performance in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), Kaufman dryly commented, "I assume, then, that you also came from a long line of hunchbacks?"
  
  
• In order to break the ice before shooting, Clark Gable, apparently unaware of co-star Charles Laughton's homosexuality, took him to a brothel. Laughton's wife Elsa Lanchester always said that Laughton was nevertheless "flattered" by this gesture.
  
  
• The character of Dr. Bacchus, who was a highly-functioning alcoholic, shares his name with the ancient Greek God of Wine.
  
  
• Clark Gable disliked wearing knee-breeches, because he found them "effeminate."
  
  

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