- His Majesty O'Keefe
Infobox Film
name = His Majesty O'Keefe
caption =
director =Byron Haskin
producer =Harold Hecht
writer =Lawrence Klingman (novel)Gerald Green (novel)
starring =Burt Lancaster Joan Rice André Morell Abraham Sofaer
music =Robert Farnon
cinematography =Otto Heller
editing =Manuel del Campo
distributor =
released = 1954
runtime = 91 min.
country = USA
language = English
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0045876"His Majesty O'Keefe" is a 1954
adventure film starringBurt Lancaster . The film was directed byByron Haskin and Otto Heller and included choreography byDaniel Nagrin . The cast also includedJoan Rice ,André Morell ,Abraham Sofaer ,Archie Savage , andBenson Fong .The film is based on the book of the same name by
Laurence Klingman and Gerald Green (1952 ).Plot summary
Captain David O'Keefe (Burt Lancaster), seeking his fortune in the 19th century South Pacific, decides to enlist island natives to harvest
copra , but runs into a wall of cultural problems. Backed by a Chinese dentist, he obtains a ship and sets about harvesting copra while fending off cantankerous native chieftains and evil German empire-builders. The natives, happy with their existence, see no reason to work hard to obtain copra, either for a German trading company or for O'Keefe. He finally motivates them by showing them how to produce large quantities of their valued coinage.Historical basis
The basis for this story is believed to be an actual eventFact|date=June 2007. A sailor named David O'Keefe was shipwrecked on
Yap in theCaroline Islands , where he found the natives highly prizedRai stones quarried at great effort and danger on the island ofPalau . He organized the natives to produce these largest of all coins more easily and then traded them for copra and other items. The carved stones he produced were not valued as highly as those obtained by traditional methods due to the lack of personal sacrifice in their production.References
*Chujoy, Anatole. "The Dance Encyclopedia". (Simon and Schuster, 1967)
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