Mutiny on the Bounty (1935 film) since the inception of talking pictures. It is grim, gripping and pictorially perfect." John Mosher of "The New Yorker" declared that the filmmakers had "done a good, solid, fine job" and wrote that Laughton's performance as Captain Bligh "may not be exactly the image of the original brute, but it's a Laughton masterpiece." "Mutiny on the Bounty" topped the annual "Film Daily" poll of 523 critics as the best film of 1936 (it was released too late in the year to appear on the 1935 ballot). According to MGM records the film earned $2,250,000 in the US and Canada and
Mutiny on the Bounty describe the pleasure which the blessing of the sight of this land diffused among us", Bligh wrote. On 14 June, with a makeshift Union Jack hoisted, they sailed into Coupang harbour. In Coupang, Bligh reported the mutiny to the authorities, and wrote to his wife: "Know then, my own Dear Betsey, I have lost the "Bounty" ..." Nelson the botanist quickly succumbed to the harsh Coupang climate and died. On 20 August, the party departed for Batavia (now Jakarta) to await a ship for Europe; the cook Thomas Hall died there, having been ill for weeks. Bligh obtained passages home