The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (play)

Wouk's novel covered a long stretch of time aboard United States Navy destroyer minesweeper USS Caine in the Pacific.

The play was first presented on television live in 1955, with Lloyd Nolan and Robert Gist repeating their stage roles as Queeg and Lt. Keefer, respectively, but with Barry Sullivan as Greenwald and Frank Lovejoy as Lt. Maryk.

[4] In 1988, Robert Altman directed another made-for-television version of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial for Columbia Pictures Television (CPT).

The cast included Eric Bogosian as Barney Greenwald, Jeff Daniels as Steve Maryk, Brad Davis as Philip Francis Queeg, Peter Gallagher as John Challee, Kevin J. O'Connor as Tom Keefer, Daniel Jenkins as Willie Keith, and Altman regular Michael Murphy as Captain Blakely.

The play was again revived on Broadway in 2006 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre in a production directed by Jerry Zaks, starring Željko Ivanek as Queeg, Timothy Daly as prosecutor Lt. Cmdr.

Caine and her entire crew survived, and rescued survivors from a capsized navy vessel, which Maryk thinks is proof that he acted appropriately.

Queeg states that, while Caine was going through a typhoon, Steve Maryk, a disloyal and disgruntled officer, rebelled against him and relieved him of command without justification.

A young signalman, Junius Urban, who was present on the bridge at the time Maryk took control, is called to testify about what happened.

His testimony tells the jury very little, but on cross-examination he lets slip that Queeg was "a nut" on numerous small matters of discipline and tidiness.

However, under cross examination from Greenwald, Southard concedes that there are rare, extreme circumstances under which sailing directly into the storm would be the only way to avoid sinking.

Keefer, an intellectual who was a writer in civilian life, having published some of his short stories in national magazines, indicates that Queeg was not insane, and that Maryk was ill-advised to relieve him of command.

Even if Queeg was far from an ideal officer, Greenwald believes, Maryk's first duty was to carry on fighting the war, and doing his best to keep Caine in action.

Because the circumstances were superficially similar to another incident that had occurred during peacetime when Queeg was an ensign, he drew the same conclusion: someone must have stolen them from the wardroom icebox, using a copy of the original key to its padlock.

Queeg's steadfast belief that this was a repeat of the same MO as the first thief led him to divert extraordinary amounts of manpower to search the ship thoroughly for a copy of the icebox-padlock key.

When several of the enlisted men confessed to Maryk that they had simply stolen the strawberries from the icebox, and eaten them, before the icebox was padlocked, and that no duplicate key existed, Queeg's refusal to accept their confession and dedication to proving his theory convinces the officers that Queeg is trying to reenact the circumstances of his prior success against all evidence to the contrary.

Maryk says Caine was foundering, on the verge of sinking, and that Queeg was too frightened and paranoid to take the proper steps to save the ship.

At the party, Keefer, Keith, Maryk and their friends are celebrating both Maryk's acquittal and the large advance that Keefer has received on Multitudes, Multitudes, when Greenwald walks in, heavily intoxicated from a number of drinks he and Challee had shared before he showed up to the party, over which they had discussed details Greenwald had left out of the case at the end of the trial.

He refers to Nazi atrocities, declaring, at one point, that it is men like Queeg who have saved his own mother, Mrs. Greenwald, from having been "melted down to a bar of soap."

He views Keefer, on the other hand, as an upper-class intellectual snob who had regarded himself as superior to Queeg, the career military man, and had helped turn Maryk and the rest of the crew against him.

Greenwald denounces Keefer, and throws a glassful of yellow wine into his face (echoing the insulting nickname of "Old Yellowstain" the crew members had given to Queeg), before walking out of the party, an act which ruins it.