Don't Give Up the Ship (film)
| Don't Give Up the Ship | |
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| Directed by | Norman Taurog |
| Produced by | Hal B. Wallis |
| Written by |
Herbert Baker Edmund Belion Henry Garson |
| Starring |
Jerry Lewis Dina Merrill Diana Spencer Claude Akins Robert Middleton Gale Gordon Mickey Shaughnessy |
| Music by | Walter Scharf |
| Cinematography | Haskell B. Boggs |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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85 minutes |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $3.5 million (est. US/ Canada rentals) 1,735,230 admissions (France) |
Don't Give Up the Ship is a comedy directed by Norman Taurog and starring Jerry Lewis. It was filmed from October 21, 1958 to January 30, 1959, and released on July 3, 1959 by Paramount Pictures.
Following World War II, an entire destroyer escort, the U.S.S. Kornblatt, has mysteriously gone missing. Lieutenant John Paul Steckler VII (Jerry Lewis), the last of a long line of good-natured but goofing-up US Navy officers, was tasked with guiding the Kornblatt to its decommission, but somehow the ship disappeared on its home journey without a trace. Now, with a $4 billion appropriation at stake, Congressman Mandeville (Gale Gordon) refuses to approve the funds until the Kornblatt is recovered. Steckler's former superior, Vice Admiral Bludde (Robert Middleton), who has been trying to sugarcoat this embarrassing incidence, has no other choice but to comply.
Just as he is ready to embark on his honeymoon with his new wife Prudence (Diana Spencer), Steckler is tracked down by Navy personnel and brought to the Pentagon, where he is charged with treason and malevolent misappropriation of government property. Though he can convince the Admiralty of his basic innocence, he is nevertheless charged with finding the Kornblatt within the next ten days, thus upsetting both his wife and his honeymoon plans. Since he is at a loss to explain the whereabouts of the ship, Steckler is teamed up with Naval Intelligence operative Ensign Benson, who happens to be an attractive woman (Dina Merrill).
Benson employs a relaxing therapy to coax Steckler's memory, succeeding with much effort. In a flashback it is told that on the day hostilities in the Pacific were finally ended, the Kornblatt was ordered to return to Pearl Harbor for the decommission of the crew members with sufficient discharge points. Steckler, assisted by Ensign Stan Wychinski (Mickey Shaughnessy), and the remaining crew, attempted to get the Kornblatt back to the mainland, but Steckler got the ship stuck on a reef near an island occupied by a garrison of still-entrenched Japanese soldiers. Captured by those soldiers while exploring, Steckler was imprisoned for a night before his impending execution, only for the Japanese commander, Colonel Takahashi (Yuki Shimoda), to learn that the war really was over. By the time of Steckler's release and the garrison's surrender to him, however, the Kornblatt and her crew, believing him dead, had already departed.
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