HIS MAJESTY O'KEEFE
(Warner Bros.) HILE ZB listeners may find it interesting to identify their old friends Guy Doleman and Lloyd Berrell in the
cast of His Majesty O’Keefe, the production has other and more intriguing elements for the curious filmgoer, This story of the Irish skipper who became King of the Island of Yap is allegedly founded on fact, but I found it more entertaining as a comic parable of the clash of cultures-and_ currencies. O'Keefe, set adrift by a crew of mutineers, is washed up on the shores of Yap and nursed back to health by the kindly natives. As his strength returns his .business instincts perk up, too, and he determines to turn adversity to profit by harvesting the thousands of dollars worth of copra he can see whenever he looks upwards, which is often since he is flat on his back. But, mortifying discovery! the natives won’t work. Or rather, the only hard work they'll do is sail several hundred miles to a remoter island where they painfully quarry large circular slabs of stone that can’t possibly be of use to anyone. To cut a long story short, O’Keefe subsequently acquires another ship and crew and a quantity of gunpowder, helps the islanders to quarry (in next to no time) an unprecedented number of millstones, then, back on Yap, refuses to let them into circulation until his ship is filled with copra. This provokes a shocking row, splits the island into what you might call the eastern and western zones, and leaves them open to the blackbirding depredations of types like Bully Hayes. In the end (not, unfortunately, before the island is subjected to fire and sword) Skipper O’Keefe makes his agonising reappraisal, unites the two island factions and drives the blackbirders into the sea. The film ends in a blaze of tropical Technicolor, with King O’Keefe enthroned alongside a smashing halfcaste queen (Joan Rice), and the island’s traditional way of life constitutionally assured. But what no one told His Majesty O’Keefe (at least the film ignored it, though I thought it the cream of the jest) was that the curious large stone discs acquired with so much risk and toil by the natives were, in fact, the Yap currency. So much for the problems of convertibility!
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19541029.2.29.1.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 797, 29 October 1954, Page 17
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381HIS MAJESTY O'KEEFE New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 797, 29 October 1954, Page 17
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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