Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), based on the popular namesake novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, and starring Charles Laughton and Clark Gable as Bligh and Christian, respectively. The film's story was presented, says Dening, as "the classic conflict between tyranny and a just cause"; Laughton's portrayal became in the public mind the definitive Bligh, "a byword for sadistic tyranny". The two subsequent major films, "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1962) with Trevor Howard and Marlon Brando, and "The Bounty" (1984) with Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson, largely perpetuated this image of Bligh and that of Christian as tragic hero. The latter film
William Stack legal drama "A Free Soul", in a small role. The film stars Norma Shearer, Leslie Howard, Lionel Barrymore, and Clark Gable. 1932 would see him in another small role, that of a doctor in "Payment Deferred", starring Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Sullivan. In "Charlie Chan's Greatest Case" (1933), starring Warner Oland in the title role, Stack had the minor part of Jack Eagan. Small roles followed in the 1934 films "The Fountain", starring Ann Harding, "Manhattan Melodrama", starring Clark Gable, William Powell, and Myrna Loy, "Wonder Bar", starring Al Jolson, and "Chained", starring Gable and Joan Crawford. Before he appeared