North West Mounted Police *** (1940, Gary Cooper, Madeleine Carroll, Paulette Goddard, Preston Foster, Robert Preston, George Bancroft) – Classic Movie Review 6071

The Paramount Pictures studio was rewarded with a hit when it paid for a top cast and Technicolor for producer-director Cecil B DeMille’s somewhat mundane, but well and busily plotted 1940 action adventure about the Royal Canadian Mounted preventing a revolt in mid-1880s Canada. And the star performances and character actors turns are definitely on its side. It was up for five Oscars but won only for Best Film Editing (Anne Bauchens).

Gary Cooper (as Dusty Rivers!) plays a Texas Ranger who travels to Canada to arrest a trapper called Jacques Corbeau (George Bancroft), wanted for murder and stirring up a rebellion of the native Métis people against the Canadian government. Cooper and Preston Foster (as Mountie Sergeant Jim Brett) both fall for nurse April Logan (Madeleine Carroll). Robert Preston plays April’s brother Ronnie Logan, the Mountie who falls deeply for Courbeau’s daughter, Louvette (Paulette Goddard).

The Paramount company baulked at the huge cost of actually filming in Canada, so instead DeMille filmed in Oregon and in the Paramount studio in Hollywood.

Alan LeMay, Jesse Lasky Jnr and C Gardner Sullivan’s screenplay is taken from R C Fetherston-Haugh’s book Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

It is shot by cinematographers Victor Milner and W Howard Greene, scored by Victor Young, and designed by art directors Hans Dreier and Roland Anderson.

Also in the cast are Lynne Overman, Akim Tamiroff, Lon Chaney Jr as Shorty, Montagu Love as Inspector Cabot, Robert Ryan, George E Stone, Walter Hampden as Big Bear, Francis McDonald, Willard Robertson, Regis Toomey, Richard Denning, Douglas Kennedy, Clara Blandick, Ralph Byrd, Lane Chandler, Julia Faye, Jack Pennick, Rod Cameron, James Seay, Harry Burns and Anthony Caruso.

The world premiere took place in Regina, Saskatchewan, the birthplace of the North West Mounted Police.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6071

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