Men Brought Safely to the Surface

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 132, 7 June 1939, Page 5

Men Brought Safely to the Surface

DEVICE USED IN “SUBMARINE D-l” . (Mayfair: Screening Friday week.) . Proclaimed as the greatest motion picture ever made with an undersea boat as its subject and locale, Submarine D-l” is a Warner Bros, melodrama co-starred Pat O’Brien and George Brent, and featuring Wayne (“Kid Galahad”) Morris. In the making of it the United States Navy Department deserves as much credit as the movie folk, for it threw open to the Warners its submarine establishments at San Diego, Cocos Coco in the Panama Canal Zone, and Newport, R. I. The most modern of submarines, officially called the D-l and also bearing the title of Dolphin, was used in all diving and surface-running scenes. The story of the D-l was written by Commander Frank Wead, U.S.N. who was the author of “Ceiling Zero” and other stage and screen hits. Pat O’Brien and Wayne Morris play a couple of young submarine crewmen who have developed two great inventions—a device to shoot men safely to the ocean’s surface if a ship is sunk, and another device to raise the U-Boat itself. In the story the D-l is rammed and sunk during some war game manoeuvres, and the boys’ inventions get a chance to show their worth. They are successful in saving the sub’s whole crew and its heroic commander.