Freddie Bartholomew, a mostly forgotten child star, received top billing in this film (the subsequent video boxes dropped him in favor of costar Spencer Tracy). He plays Harvey Cheyne, a spoiled-rotten brat who is used to getting his way because of his rich father. Nobody likes him: the help calls him "it," his "friends" put up with him because he showers them with gifts, and even his father (Melvyn Douglas) doesn't seem to know what to do with him. When Harvey's scheme to get into an elite club at his private school goes wrong, he's booted by the kindly headmaster, and poor old dad is forced to deal with him. The two of them go on a cruise, where Harvey, ever the brat, ends up falling overboard after bingeing on ice cream. He nearly drowns, but he's rescued by the odd Portuguese fisherman Manuel, played by Spencer Tracy, one of the crewmembers of a ship captained by Captain Disko (Lionel Barrymore in a typically scenery-chewing performance). Disko refuses to turn around and deliver Harvey to dry land, despite the kid's insistence, and Harvey must learn the value of hard work if he's going to make it on the ship.

Manuel, the crusty fisherman who likes to sing and talk to fish, gradually takes a liking in the brat. This causes some problems when they become involved in a bet with a fellow crewmember (an almost unrecognizable John Carradine) over who can catch more fish; Harvey's natural inclination is to cheat if at all possible, and it results in a potentially serious injury. Manuel eventually becomes a father figure to Harvey, whose own father was too busy making money to pay attention to his son. Eventually, when Harvey has turned into a competent fisherman, he begins to dread the inevitable return to shore.

Bartholomew's transition from evil brat to nice kid is so subtle that it's surprising when you notice it. Starring in his eleventh film at the tender age of twelve, Bartholomew, like so many other child stars, would find that when his cuteness and precociousness wore off with the advent of puberty, parts became more infrequent. He retired from acting in the early 1950s, penniless after a custody battle between his aunt, who raised him, and his natural parents. He's one of those preternaturally good child actors, sort of like Haley Joel Osment, whom you can't quite believe is actually a preteen; there's always the suspicion that these kids are actually miniature adults. It's interesting to watch Bartholomew in the scenes he shares with that other 1930s child star Mickey Rooney, who plays Disko's son. Rooney's career survived childhood, perhaps because he didn't ever look much different than he had as a little boy; he always looked older than he was, and wiser.

Victor Fleming keeps things moving, giving equal time to Manuel's life lessons and the day-to-day functioning of the fishing boat. There are some pretty exciting scenes late in the film, when Disko races another ship to be the first ship back in port. In his long career, Fleming seemed more attuned to bombast than to subtlety, but watch the way he handles the tragedy near the end of the film; I can't imagine anyone coming up with a more sensitive and underplayed scene. The parallels between this fim and 1949's Down to the Sea in Ships, starring Dean Stockwell as the child in question and Richard Widmark as the father figure (and even including Lionel Barrymore as a ship's captain) are plentiful and interesting enough that someone, perhaps myself, could write a good essay about them.

The film was up for four Oscars including Best Picture, and it netted Tracy his first of two consecutive Oscars (the next for Boys Town); it was his second of three consecutive and nine total nominations. The film was also up for Best Editing and Best Screenplay (Marc Connelly, John Lee Mahin, and Dale Van Every). It lost Best Picture to the stately and boring The Life of Emile Zola; the award should have gone to the sparkling comedy The Awful Truth.