FAQ

Taking his first command in 1787 as Captain of the British merchant ship the HMS Bounty, William Bligh (Trevor Howard) sets sail from England to Tahiti to obtain breadfruit plants and transport them to British Jamaica where they will be grown to supply plantation slaves with an easy-to-grow, cheap, and nutritious food plant. During the journey, Bligh becomes so abusive to the crew that Leftenant Fletcher Christian (Marlon Brando) sees no alternative but to mutiny against the captain and take over control of the Bounty.

Mutiny on the Bounty, which is based on a true story, is a 1932 novel by American authors Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. The screenplay for the movie was credited to American screenwriter Charles Lederer (with uncredited input from Eric Ambler, William L. Driscoll, Borden Chase, John Gay, and Ben Hecht). It is the second American film to be made from the novel, the first being Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). A third movie adaptation of Mutiny on the Bounty, titled simply The Bounty (1984) was released in 1984, and a TV movie, Mutiny on the Bounty (2011), was released in 2011.

Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) is a tree in the Moraceae (Mulberry) family that grows to be about 85 feet tall and prefers warm, tropical climates. The fruit is grapefruit-sized and starchy. When cooked or baked, breadfruit is said to taste like potatoes or freshly baked bread.

The narrator is the gardener, William Brown (Richard Haydn).

Keelhauling is a medieval form of punishment where a convicted sailor's arms were tied to long ropes, and he was tossed off the bow into the water. Sailors on either side of the deck used the ends of the ropes to 'haul' his body under the ship's keel, either from one side of the ship to the other or down the length of the ship (from bow to stern). If the sailor was not ripped to shreds by the barnacles encrusting the ship's hull, he most certainly drowned. In the case of this movie, he got eaten by a shark.

Yes. Brando married Tarita, who played Maimiti in the film, in 1962 (divorced in 1972). Coincidentally, he was also previously married (1960-1962) to Movita, who had a minor role as Tehani in the 1935 production of Mutiny on the Bounty.

Pitcairn Island lies in the South Pacific Ocean about 1,359 miles (2170km) southeast of Tahiti, which itself lies about 3,800 miles (6,130km) east of Australia. It is inhabited mostly by descendants of the Bounty mutineers and the Tahitians who accompanied them.

Maimiti and Christian are awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of crackling fire on the Bounty. In attempting to save the sextant, Christian is severely burned. He is returned to shore where he is covered with a blanket and given laudanum. Mills (Richard Harris) apologizes for Christian's 'bad luck' at getting burned, explaining that he only burned the Bounty because the men were afraid that Christian might force them to go back to England. With Miamiti at his side, Christian dies. The final scene is of the burning Bounty as it collapses and sinks into the bay.