Mutiny on the Bounty (1935 film) but was not successful and received few bookings outside Australia. There was also an even earlier film, the 1916 Australian–New Zealand film, "The Mutiny on the Bounty" directed by Raymond Longford. Mutiny on the Bounty (1935 film) Mutiny on the Bounty is a 1935 American drama film directed by Frank Lloyd and starring Charles Laughton and Clark Gable, based on the Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall novel "Mutiny on the Bounty". The film was one of the biggest hits of its time. Although its historical accuracy has been questioned (inevitably, as it is based on a novel), film critics
Charles Laughton and José Ferrer as Greenwald based on the original novel, but did not affect that film's box-office performance. Laughton also directed a staged reading in 1953 of Stephen Vincent Benét's "John Brown's Body", a full-length poem about the American Civil War and its aftermath. The production starred Tyrone Power, Raymond Massey (re-creating his film characterisations of Abraham Lincoln and John Brown), and Judith Anderson. Laughton did not appear himself in either production, but "John Brown's Body" was recorded complete by Columbia Masterworks. Laughton returned to the London stage in May 1958 to direct and star in Jane Arden's "The Party"