Moby Dick (1956 film) eyes. The head apparatus which could move like a rocking horse was employed when actors were in the water with the whale. Gregory Peck's last speech is delivered in the studio while riding the white whale's hump (a hole was drilled in the side of the whale so Peck could conceal his real leg). The "Pequod" was portrayed by, appropriately, the "Moby Dick". Built in England in 1887 as the "Ryelands", the ship came into the hands of the film industry in the 50s, and was also used in "Treasure Island". It was destroyed by fire in Morecambe, England in
Moby-Dick Melville's style was usually praised regardless of the reviewer's judgment of the book, but some perceived the same tendency to over-doing here, and some found his style too American. Some sixty reviews appeared in America, the criterion for counting as a review being more than two lines of comment. Only a couple of reviewers expressed themselves early enough not to be influenced by news of the British reception. Though "Moby-Dick" did contain the "Epilogue" and so accounted for Ishmael's survival, the British reviews influenced the American reception. The earliest American review, in the Boston "Post" for November 20, quoted the