The Sand Pebbles poster
Director Robert Wise
Screenplay Robert Anderson

The Sand Pebbles

Tagline: This is the heroic story of the men on the U.S.S. San Pablo who disturbed the sleeping dragon of savage China as the threatened world watched in breathless terror.

Release Date: 1966-12-20

Duration: 196 minutes

Synopsis

Engineer Jake Holman arrives aboard the gunboat USS San Pablo, assigned to patrol a tributary of the Yangtze in the middle of exploited and revolution-torn 1926 China. His iconoclasm and cynical nature soon clash with the 'rice-bowl' system which runs the ship and the uneasy symbiosis between Chinese and foreigner on the river. Hostility towards the gunboat's presence reaches a climax when the boat must crash through a river-boom and rescue missionaries upriver at China Light Mission.

Casting

  • Candice Bergen
    Shirley Eckert
  • Steve McQueen
    Jake Holman
  • James Hong
    Victor Shu
  • Mako
    Po-han
  • Richard Crenna
    Captain Collins
  • Gavin MacLeod
    Crosley
  • Joe Turkel
    Bronson
  • Ford Rainey
    Harris
  • Charles Robinson
    Ensign Bordelles
  • Richard Attenborough
    Frenchy Burgoyne