Production
While Donovan's Reef is set on the fictional island of Haleakaloha, which has a French governor, the only Polynesian language exhibited in the film is Hawaiian -- "Haleakaloha" can be translated as "Home of Laughter and Love" (hale = home, aka = laugh, aloha = love) -- and Amelia has come from Honolulu by sailing ship, indicating a location much closer to Hawaii than to French Polynesia.
The movie was actually filmed on Kauai, Hawaii. The home of the French island governor, the white beach house with coconut palms and surrounding grass lawn, is the Allerton Estate home and former summer residence of Hawaiian Queen Emma near Poipu Beach, now a part of the National Tropical Botanical Garden (without the scenes of boats and canoes on the Wailua River, which were edited and merged with scenes filmed at the Allerton Estate).
There is one major historical error: French Polynesia was 4,000 km (about 2200 nautical miles) east of the farthest Japanese expansion, and there was no fighting there.
In a bit of tongue-in-cheek, portraits of the founder and leaders of the Dedham Shipping Company are all of Warden (in appropriate period dress). The portrait of Manulani appears to be a similar treatment of Allen, as she would appear if she were Polynesian or hapa.
A mistaken use of a blasphemy slipped past the censors. At the end of the first fight between John Wayne and Lee Marvin, after Jack Warden has broken it up, Wayne and Marvin start to get out of the pond, but Marvin slipped and fell back into the water. As he did so, he exclaimed, "Jesus!" Because it was funny, the error was left in the film, and because the sound of the water partially obscured the exclamation, the dialogue was also left unaltered.
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