Winners of the Wilderness
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Winners of the Wilderness |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1927 |
| length | 68 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | WS Van Dyke |
| script | John Thomas Neville |
| production | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| music | William ax |
| camera | Clyde De Vinna |
| cut | Conrad A. Annoying |
| occupation | |
| |
Winners of the Wilderness is a 1927 American silent film starring Tim McCoy and Joan Crawford . The two actors reappeared together a year later in The Law of the Range .
action
In 1755, tensions between the Native Americans and French settlers in what is now Pennsylvania increased against the backdrop of European entanglements. General Edward Braddock's failed attempt to capture French Fort Duquesne during the French and Indian Wars sparked an uprising among local indigenous peoples. General Contrecoeur and his pretty daughter are saved by the English Colonel O'Hara, who manages to bring about peace and harmony between civilizations and peoples in the end.
background
Joan Crawford had been with MGM since 1925 and quickly rose to become a popular actress. In 1926 she was named one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars and regularly graced the covers of magazines and journals. However, she had not yet found a fixed type of role for herself and so she alternated between main and supporting roles in a wide variety of genres. She therefore switched directly from the lead role in Paris to the side of Tim McCoy and an inexpensive western. Westerns were the bread-and-butter business for many studios because on the one hand they were extremely inexpensive and quickly turned off, but on the other hand they produced a steady profit. Popular cowboy stars like Tom Mix and William S. Hart regularly appeared in the list of the 20 best-selling stars. MGM tried to make Tim McCoy an established name in the late 1920s, but with the advent of talkies , those responsible decided not to pursue the genre any further.
Winners of the Wilderness was filmed in parallel with War Paint , also starring Tim McCoy. For a film that was conceived for matinee performances and a predominantly young audience, Winners of the Wilderness surprised with sometimes drastic depictions of violence and eroticism. In one scene, a naked prisoner is burned alive on the torture stake. During the first encounter with Tim McCoy, which takes place in her boudoir, Joan Crawford wears a transparent negligée with a deep neckline, on which the camera pauses particularly intensely during the take.
Theatrical release
At $ 86,000 to manufacture, it was a very inexpensive production by MGM standards. However, the budget was still significantly higher than that for the western productions of the other studios, some of which were in the four-digit dollar range. With a sum of 158,000 dollars, he brought in an above-average value for the genre in the USA. With foreign revenues of $ 125,000 and a cumulative total of $ 283,000, the studio was able to realize a respectable, if not significantly high, profit of $ 74,000 in the end.
literature
- Roy Newquist (Ed.): Conversations with Joan Crawford . Citadel Press, Secaucus, NJ 1980, ISBN 0-8065-0720-9 .
- Lawrence J. Quirk : The Complete Films of Joan Crawford . Citadel Press, Secaucus, NJ 1988, ISBN 0-8065-1078-1 .
- Lawrence J. Quirk, William Schoell: Joan Crawford. The Essential Biography . University Press, Lexington, KY. 2002, ISBN 0-8131-2254-6 .
- Alexander Walker: Joan Crawford. The Ultimate Star . Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1983, ISBN 0-297-78216-9 .