A fast paced seafaring tale featuring Rudolph Valentino as Ramon Laredo, a bored socialite who finds his manhood and a sense of purpose only after being shanghaied. Initially he is such a coddled dude that he drinks something called a "Mild Manhattan", but soon after being forced to serve as a deckhand he transforms into an extremely capable sailor( looking quite contemporary in jeans and a dark pullover) and earns the respect of the rugged crewmen who once dismissed him as a "soft thing." Eventually his path crosses with that of Letty Moran (Dorothy Dalton), a tomboyish captain's daughter. The two actually met briefly before, on land, where she was as almost as contemptuous of the city slicker in his yachting outfit as the crewmen once were. However, although she is initially as tough as Ramon is effete, the situation reverses itself once Ramon rescues her from her father's ship whose hold has caught fire. Although Ramon is impressed by her strength of body and purpose, Letty, in tandem with Ramon's growing masculinity, becomes more and more womanly as the film progresses, allowing herself to be assisted out of boats (perhaps not so much because she's suddenly helpless as that she's glad someone is finally recognizing her as female) and becoming clothes conscious enough to replace her trousers with a dress, albeit a rather plain and no-nonsense one. (In contrast, Ramon indifferently allows his swanky white bell bottoms to become muddier and muddier.) These character changes culminate when Ramon saves Letty from his nemesis Captain Kitchell, played by Walter Long (who costarred in The Sheik and once again plays a character with unsavoury designs on Rudy's woman).
Entertaining, but in retrospect a bit depressing in that the ridicule Ramon undergoes as a ballroom dancing, tea sipping dandy mirrors all too closely the vicious powder puff slurs the real life Valentino tried to refute practically until the end of his short life.
Entertaining, but in retrospect a bit depressing in that the ridicule Ramon undergoes as a ballroom dancing, tea sipping dandy mirrors all too closely the vicious powder puff slurs the real life Valentino tried to refute practically until the end of his short life.