Giant Moby Dick to return to Welsh town 70 years after filming of Hollywood classic

Nation.Cymru staff

A giant replica of Moby Dick will make its way through the streets of a Welsh coastal community as part of celebrations marking its links with the classic Hollywood film.

Fishguard and neighbouring Goodwick will host a series of events in September to mark the 70th anniversary of the release of Moby Dick, parts of which were filmed in west Wales.

The centrepiece will be a giant lantern parade through the two towns on Friday, September 25, led by a replica of the great white whale pursued by Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s novel.

Bill Hamblett, director of Cardigan’s Small World Theatre, has been entrusted with bringing the whale to life.

He said: “Moby Dick will be made out of recyclable materials and will be about 27 per cent the size of a real-life sperm whale.

“Just as John Huston encountered numerous challenges in bringing Moby Dick to the big screen, we also have a few hurdles to overcome.

“Yet everything is coming together and I’m confident we can do justice to what will obviously be a very special occasion.”

The celebrations form part of September’s Ar Ymyl y Tir/On Land’s Edge Festival and have received £44,300 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

The 1956 film was directed by John Huston and adapted with writer Ray Bradbury from Melville’s novel. It starred Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab alongside Richard Basehart, Leo Genn and Orson Welles.

Filming began in Fishguard and nearby Ceibwr Bay at Huston’s request, with local people recruited as extras and the production based in the town. Further scenes were filmed in Portugal and the Canary Islands.

The anniversary programme will explore both the area’s cinematic connections and its wider maritime heritage.

As well as the lantern parade, events will include talks on the history of whaling and a virtual reality installation projecting a whale into the bay.

The film will also be screened at Theatr Gwaun, while exhibitions and displays will explore local wildlife and history, including the appearance of a humpback whale in the bay in 2024.

Organisers also hope to collect memories and artefacts from people who remember the Hollywood production, including stories about encounters between residents and the visiting actors and a model whale reportedly lost at sea.

Ahead of the parade, Mr Hamblett will reveal his own unusual family connection with the making of Moby Dick during an event at Theatr Gwaun on Wednesday, September 9.

His father, Charles Hamblett, was one of a team of Hollywood screenwriters who worked on the movie, while the family lived near Gregory Peck in California during the late 1950s.

Charles Hamblett’s memories of the 1954 filming off Fishguard later inspired his surreal fantasy novel The Crazy Kill, in which Peck becomes “Gregory Pinch” and Huston is renamed “John Simpson”.

Mr Hamblett said: “The Crazy Kill is essentially a pastiche of Moby Dick written in the slang of the 1950s.

“But its insight into Huston and Peck is absolutely spot-on and the book provides a remarkable snapshot on how Hollywood came to west Wales to make a film about a whale in the middle of the ocean.”

His talk, John Huston Knew My Father: Moby Dick And Other Fishy Tales, will also explore his family’s connections with figures including John Lennon and Yoko Ono, John F Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, as well as the CIA’s secret experiments into the effects of LSD.

John Huston Knew My Father: Moby Dick And Other Fishy Tales takes place at Theatr Gwaun at 6pm on Wednesday, September 9, with doors opening at 5.30pm. Tickets cost £6 for adults and £3 for children.

Full details are available here. 

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