Soldiers Three *** (1951, Stewart Granger, Walter Pidgeon, David Niven, Robert Newton, Cyril Cusack) – Classic Movie Review 11,170

Director Tay Garnett’s 1951 MGM black and white film Soldiers Three is a minor-league, though entertaining Gunga Din-style comedy adventure tale, derived from Rudyard Kipling short stories, with Indian location shots from Kim (1950) helping things out.

The late 1800s tale is of an English colonel, Col. Brunswick (Walter Pidgeon), and a trio of unruly private soldiers (Stewart Granger as Pvt. Archibald Ackroyd, Robert Newton as Pvt. Bill Sykes and Cyril Cusack as Pvt. Dennis Malloy) in his command looking for laughs and adventure in colonial India.

Acting wise, there are over-broad, but distinctly crowd-pleasing performances from David Niven as Captain Pindenny, private Granger and private Newton, the hard-living actor once again playing a hard drinker. With her British films being played regularly on American TV, Greta Gynt (Margrethe Woxholt) was given her first role in American films as the female lead Crenshaw, but she is badly miscast as a platinum blonde with a made-up bosom, and soon headed back to Britain and B movies.

Also in the cast are Frank Allenby as Colonel Groat, Robert Coote as as Major Mercer, Dan O’Herlihy as Sergeant Murphy, Michael Ansara as Manik Rao, Richard Hale as Govind-Lal, Walter Kingsford, Charles Cane, Patrick Whyte, Movita Castenada, Harry Lang, Patrick Aherne, David Dunbar, Frank Hagney, Stuart Hall, James Logan, Harry Martin, Cyril McLaglen, Clive Morgan, Allen O’Locklin, Patrick O’Moore, John Sheehan, Wilson Wood, and George Cathrey.

It is shot at  Paramount Ranch, 2813 Cornell Road, Agoura, California; Corriganville, Ray Corrigan Ranch, Simi Valley, California; and Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah.

The bulk of the story is taken from Kipling’s The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney.

Soldiers Three is directed by Tay Garnett, runs 92 minutes, is made and released by MGM, is written by Marguerite Roberts, Tom Reed, Marjory Gaffney, Sidney Gilliat, Michael Hogan, Grover Jones, Vincent Lawrence, L du Garde Peach and Malcolm Stuart Boylan, is shot in black and white by William C Mellor, is produced by Pandro S Berman, is scored by Adolph Deutsch and Alex Hyde, and is designed by Cedric Gibbons and Malcolm Brown.

When it was discovered that Stewart Granger could not do an Irish accent, the character of Irishman Terence Mulvaney was changed to the Cockney character Ackroyd, as Granger could do a Cockney accent. Then the other two lead characters also had their names changed, to Malloy and Sykes. A new peaceful Indian character, Govind-Lal, was added, played by Tennessee-born Richard Hale.

Stewart Granger said: ‘The script. Oh dear! If Metro had planned to ruin my career they couldn’t have chosen a better subject.’

Tay Garnett recalled: ‘It should have made a good picture, but the miscasting of one principal, which I failed to recognize until it was too late, threw the show completely out of balance. Trying to restore equilibrium with jokes and gags was like trying to cure bubonic plague with warm beer.’

It cost $1,429,000, and earned $1,016,000 in the US and Canada and $1,221,000 overseas, but making a profit of only $23,000.

A balcony collapsed during the filming of a barroom brawl scene and two stunt men were hospitalised.

Pandro S Berman, who had previously produced Gunga Din in 1939 said: ‘We are making a rough and tumble brawling comedy with three British soldiers out of a Kipling work as major characters and that presents major problems. The people of India hated Kipling. As to the British, how they will react when we show three roistering, drunken Tommies on the screen is a question. When I produced Gunga Din at RKO it was banned in India and efforts were made to stop it being shown in the British Isles. But if we were to film Soldiers Three to please either Britain or India we would have to make it much too dull to for our much bigger audience here at home in America.’

Thanks to Treasure Island, Newton has become the patron saint of the annual International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,170

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