Moby Dick (Hallmark Hall of Fame)

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Moby Dick was a 1954 American television movie. Adapted from the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville it aired as an episode of Hallmark Hall of Fame . [1]

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It was directed by Albert McCleery.

The budget was $20,000 with a cast of 24. "This is not a great spectacle," said McCleery. "It's the story of a man who tears himself to pieces in a frantic desire to find God. When you get down to it it's a religious story - not a whaling party." [2]

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Captain Ahab is a fictional character and one of the protagonists in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851). He is the monomaniacal captain of the whaling ship Pequod. On a previous voyage, the white whale Moby Dick bit off Ahab's leg, and he now wears a prosthetic leg made out of whalebone. The whaling voyage of the Pequod ends up as a hunt for revenge on the whale, as Ahab forces the crew members to support his fanatical mission. When Moby Dick is finally sighted, Ahab's hatred robs him of all caution, and the whale drags him to his death beneath the sea and sinks the Pequod.

Pip, short for Pippin, is the African-American cabin-boy on the whaling-ship Pequod in Herman Melville's 1851 novel, Moby-Dick. When Pip falls overboard he is left stranded in the sea, and rescued only by chance and becomes "mad." The book's narrator, Ishmael, however, thinks that this "madness" gives Pip the power to see the world as it is. Pip is first described as "insignificant," but is the only member of the crew to awaken feelings of humanity in Ahab, the ship's monomaniacal captain.

References

  1. Moby Dick at Paley Centre
  2. "Moby Dick to Hit TV this Sunday minus whale". The Tipton Daily Tribune. 10 May 1954. p. 6.