Gary Cooper is Christopher Holden, a frontiersman who catches wind of a planned Indian uprising in the Ohio valley and does his best to try to keep the peace.
Holden suspects an old enemy named Martin Garth (Howard da Silva) might be behind the trouble. While Pennsylvania and Virginia squabble over which state includes the land surrounding Fort Pitt, Garth wants to claim the entire Ohio area for his own.
And he’s been trading weapons to the Indians, from whom he claims to have a land grant for that area.
Caught between the men is Abigial Hale, who’s been convicted of murder in England and chooses indentured servitude in the colonies over death by hanging.
The trio first meet on a ship bound for those colonies. Garth tries to buy the fetching young redhead. Holden outbids him by six-pence, then gives Abigail her freedom. After all, he’s engaged to another woman.
Undeterred, Garth convinces the bondsmen to sell Abigail a second time. He has her cleaning floors in a tavern run by a henchman named Bone when Holden rescues her a second time.
After that Holden, his plans for marriage shattered, can’t seem to shake the lovely Abigale. She can’t seem to shake Martin Garth. That’s fine with Holden, who’s more than willing to use Abigale as bait.
Review:
Another fanciful jaunt through history, guided by famed director Cecil B. DeMille. The film is based around Pontiac’s Rebellion, which occurred in 1763, after the French and Indian War, and saw the Indians seize five small forts and put Fort Detroit and Fort Pitt under siege.
While Cooper is the hero of the piece, it’s Paulette who’s constantly in peril. Saddled with a horrendous accent in DeMille’s earlier North West Mounted Police, here she’s threatened with hanging and a whipping, sold to a man who has immoral intentions and nearly burned at the stake by Indians.
Oh, and she and Cooper are also swept over a waterfall in one of the film’s most dramatic scenes. They survive when Cooper, with Paulette draped around his neck, grabs hold of a tree branch. Among the film’s other highlights: the assault on Fort Pitt, in which the Indians try to use their canoes to scale the fort’s walls.
The supporting cast includes Ward Bond as Cooper’s fellow frontiersman, Virginia Grey as the woman who breaks Cooper’s heart by marrying his brother and Boris Karloff as an Indian chief who gets tricked into thinking Cooper has magical powers with the help of a compass. Oh, and then there’s DeMille’s daughter, Katherine. She plays Hannah, the Indian wife of Martin Garth, which makes her quite jealous of Abigail Hale.
Directed by:
Cecil B. DeMille
Cast:
Gary Cooper … Christopher Holden
Paulette Goddard … Abigail Hale
Howard da Silva … Martin Garth
Boris Karloff … Guyasuta
Cecil Kellaway … Jeremy Love
Ward Bond … John Fraser
Virginia Campbell … Mrs. John Fraser
Katherine De Mille … Hannah
Henry Wilcoxin … Capt. Steele
C. Aubrey Smith … Lord Chief Justice
Victor Varconi … Capt. Simeon Ecuyer
Virginia Grey … Diana
Mike Mazurki … Bone
Porter Hall … Leach
Richard Gaines … Col. George Washington
Gavin Muir … Lt. Fergus McKenzie
Jane Nigh … Evelyn
Alan Napier … Sir William Johnson
Marc Lawrence … Sioto
Raymond Hatton … Vegango scout
John Myling … Col. Henry Bouquet
Runtime: 147 min.
Memorable lines:
Narrator: “Civilization lay to the east of the Allegheny Mountains. Conquest, opportunity and death lay to the west.”
Leach: “Double selling a bond slave is a hanging offense.”
Martin Garth: “Here’s a mink for you. So the rope won’t scratch your neck.”
Diana: “Chris, when I look into your eyes, I don’t see myself there.”
Christopher Holden: “Well, you must be a little blind.”
Diana: “I see horizons. Ranges of uncrossed mountains. The unknown. You belong to that, Chris — the way an eagle belongs to the sky. But I’m different.”
John Fraser: “I don’t know what the Good Lord was about when he made a female out of a perfectly good rib.”
Capt. Steele, admiring Abby: “I’ve seen that girl somewhere.”
Fellow officer: “Must have been heaven.”
Abigail Hale: “Everything you’ve done for me is because you wanted to challenge Garth. You’re not a man; you’re a walking loaded rifle with one blood-thirsty purpose — to kill Garth. You haven’t blood in your veins, you’ve got gunpowder.”
Christopher Holden, when Garth shows up at the dance: “The bear has come for the honey.”
Mrs. Fraser: “He’s come for your hide.”
Shopkeeper: “You can’t burn my place! It took me two years to build that store.”
Christopher Holden: “It’ll take you all eternity to grow a new scalp.”
Abigail Hale as she and Christopher Holden flee in a canoe, with the Indians in pursuit. “There’s rapids ahead!”
Christopher Holden: “There’s worse behind.”
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