In 1620, a group of religious outcasts boarded the Mayflower in England and set sail for the New World, where they founded a tiny wilderness outpost that was the genesis for what would become the United States of America. This is their thrilling story, a tale of hardship and devotion, of storms, hunger and disease faced and defied. Screen great Spencer Tracy portrays the Mayflower’s skipper, whose clenched heart is opened by his love for a gentle passenger (Gene Tierney) and the unfaltering courage of the pilgrims. Clarence Brown’s forthright direction, Miklos Rozsa’s hymn-tinged score and Academy AwardŽ-winning* special effects that thrust the viewer into twisting, towering seas await all who experience this memorable Plymouth Adventure.

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MGM's special effects department pulled out all the stops for the studio's lavish tribute to the pilgrim spirit and even won an OscarŽ for the impressive storms at sea they created. It wasn't enough to turn Plymouth Adventure (1952) into a box-office winner, though. Around the studio it was quickly dubbed MGM's "Thanksgiving turkey." Years later, studio head Dore Schary would admit "there weren't enough descendants of the original Mayflower passengers to help it cross over to success." But despite the picture's problems, there was still a lot of great talent at work.

To begin with, Schary assigned the production to director Clarence Brown, a long-time studio veteran. To many that might have seemed a strange choice. Brown was best known as one of Greta Garbo's favorite directors on films like Flesh and the Devil (1926) and Anna Karenina. On Plymouth Adventure, he even used her favorite cameraman, William Daniels, who did a brilliant job of combining the special effects work with sweeping vistas of the Atlantic. But Brown had another specialty as a director often overshadowed by his work with the Swedish superstar. From Ah, Wilderness! in 1935 to Intruder in the Dust in 1949, he had helmed a string of powerful family films, often with a keen sense of the American spirit. That made him the perfect choice to captain this tale of some of the first Americans.