The Filming of 'Moby Dick'

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Historic sites · Year: 1956

In the mid-1950s, the producer of Moby Dick landed by chance in Gran Canaria while flying to Latin America to find a location, when he came face to face with the island’s possibilities to film the most spectacular scenes of the epic final battle between the famed white whale and Captain Ahab (Gregory Peck).

The titanic Moby Dick , by Herman Melville, like all masterpieces of universal literature, remains open to multiple interpretations. The irascible Irish director, John Huston, and the oneiric screenwriter, Ray Bradbury, wove an epic high-budget crusade that this year marks 60 years since filming in the Canary Islands. The film became the highest-grossing in the United States in 1956.

The final scenes of the battle that seal the tortuous pursuit of the beautiful cetacean were filmed in El Confital Bay in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The model of the great albino whale was built in a now-defunct shipyard on Tenerife street and the dazzling leading man of the film spent Christmas 1955 at the Hotel Santa Catalina in the Canarian capital.

Beyond the stay of the director of The Maltese Falcon or the prescient Rebel Without a Cause and the established actor, who in 1955 was still enjoying the fruits of success from his Roman Holiday (1953), they left a trail of anecdotes and adventures around the city, Moby Dick was the great feature film of the decade in the Archipelago. The mythical aura that then surrounded North American film stars has turned the film into a historic milestone.

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