Odongo * (1956, Rhonda Fleming, Macdonald Carey, Juma) – Classic Movie Review 10,555

Rhonda Fleming is top billed in a Technicolor and CinemaScope African adventure movie for Warwick Films, Odongo (1956), distributed by Columbia Pictures, and produced by Irving Allen and Bond supremo Albert R Broccoli. It is shot at Elstree Studios, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England, with exteriors filmed in East Africa.

Writer-director John Gilling’s 1956 Brit film Odongo is a corny, jumbled tale set on safari in Africa, with the two American stars Macdonald Carey and Rhonda Fleming looking a bit out of place as the Brits show their stiff-upper-lips all over the place.

Steamy goings-on between a lady animal doctor (Fleming), a veterinarian from Pittsburgh, and a professional big-game hunter (Carey) of game for captivity are mingled with a search for the hunter’s lost native boy Odongo (Juma) who has vanished after it is alleged that he set the animals loose.

It was films like this that got people deserting the cinema for TV in the Fifties. Why would anyone come up with a title like that? But then Fleming had already starred in Jivaro.

Talented writer-director Gilling does his level best to keep the hokum pacy and professional. His screenplay is based on the story by Islin Auster.

Columbia Pictures studio boss Harry Cohn persuaded Fleming to make the film, giving her the choice of leading man from contract players Macdonald Carey and Jack Lemmon. She opted for the more experienced Carey but said in 1994: ‘I think Jack owes me for not making Odongo’.

Eleanor Summerfield (as Celia Watford) and Leonard Sachs (as Game Warden) were real-life marrieds. Summerfield was married to Sachs from 1947 until his death in 1990, aged 80. They had two sons: the late actor Robin Sachs and Toby Sachs. Summerfield died on 13 July 2001, aged 80.

Leonard Sachs founded an old time music hall named the Players’ Theatre, in Villiers Street, Charing Cross, London. He appeared as the chairman of the Leeds City Varieties in the BBC TV series The Good Old Days, which ran from 1953 to 1983. He played Group Captain Pritchard in Broccoli’s Thunderball (1965).

Also in the cast are Francis De Wolff, Earl Cameron, Dan Jackson, Errol John, Paul Hardmuth, Michael Carridia, Bartholomew Sketch and Lionel Ngakane.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,555

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