When United Artists optioned the film rights to Navy submarine commander Edward L. Beach's 1955 best seller Run Silent, Run Deep, Burt Lancaster's Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions was offered the chance to adapt the material. Seeing in the fact-based novel the ingredients for a sure-fire box office hit (whose projected profits would help to compensate for the disappointing returns of the company's masterful but ahead-of-its time The Sweet Smell of Success), HHL secured the services of aging Hollywood icon Clark Gable for the pivotal role of an embittered submarine captain eager to return to the sea to avenge the loss of his last command. With Lancaster taking on the role of Gable's younger, skeptical second-in-command, Run Silent, Run Deep drew the obvious comparisons to Herman Melville's Moby Dick (which John Huston had adapted for films in 1956). Set during the early days of World War II, the film was marked by heated battles behind-the-scenes as well, with the 57 year-old Gable adhering to an wavering 9 to 5 work day (even if it meant quitting in the middle of a take) and Lancaster tussling with director Robert Wise. Wise quit the production when Lancaster squeezed him out of the editing process and Run Silent, Run Deep was another box office non-starter, despite kudos from the nation's critics, including The New York Times's Bosley Crowther who maintained that "a better film about war beneath the ocean and about guys in 'the silent service' has not been made."

By Richard Harland Smith