Here's a spectacularly fun Mountie episode of the Vallee Varieties,  featuring Rudy Valee as an amusing singing Mountie,  alongside the dapper John Barrymore.

This is an interesting episode.  As it's a rehearsal,  there is no audience to laugh at the jokes!  Sometimes they're hard to detect without the cues.  It's great in that the cast laughs at flubs,  and they sometimes give cursory reads through certain bits.  On top of that,  it's a fun story!

You can download this episode HERE for free!

Here we have three badly photographed lovelies from my collection of lobby cards.  For them that don't know,  lobby cards are small posters that are displayed at the front of a theatre to advertise current or upcoming films.  They usually come in sets,  and the number of different cards in a set could be anywhere from six to twelve;  for example,  my set of Mestizo cards came as a set of twelve.  Now, for these films:

• The first in this set is from the 1943 picture, Riders of the Northwest Mounted.  It starred Russell Hayden,  who became well known as one of Hopalong Cassidy's peppy sidekicks (and my favourite).  The big draw of this picture is the feller on the far right;  Bob Wills, bandleader of the Texas Playboys,  who guest starred,  offering a few songs in true singing cowboy fashion.

• Second is a tantalising tidbit from the 1961 Robert Ryan/John Dehner feature The Canadians,  that I've mentioned on this page as one of the Mountie movies that I'm dying to see (HERE).  Until I actually see it,  this beauty will mock me from its place on my wall.
  

I have a pretty good collection of Mountie-related lobby cards,  and I must say,  it's cool to have these artifacts of the times and places that these films were actually screened!

Here are three of my favourite images featuring scenes of Canadian Mountie action!  If I didn't already live on the wide open prairie with deep winters and expansive wilderness,  I might want to head just a few hundred miles north and join up with the R.C.M.P.!  I hope you enjoy these as much as I do!

The first of these stunners is by Dean Cornwell,  one of my top fave illustrators!  His stuff it usually a lot more action packed,  but says it all about the legendary Mountie; calm under fire, and ready for all!  I highly urge you to look for more of his work.  Read about him HERE.

The second is by illustration legend Harold "Hal" Foster,   taking time away from drawing the Prince Valiant comic strip to give us this great image of a Mountie and his team.

The third is by noted historical painter and pulp illustrator James Edwin McConnell; you can read about him HERE.

(click image to enlarge, then use the arrow keys ← → to change images )

The stereoscope is a type of 3d image viewer,  invented in the early 1800s by Victorian inventor, Sir Charles Wheatstone.  Over the years there have been many permutations of the divive,  in particular the hand-held version,  leading up the the familiar modern form that we all know as the Viewmaster.

This is a beautiful set of viewmaster reels that I scored on Ebay! The images are all wonderfully shot,  depicting our scarlet-coated stalwart in a variety of lovely Canadian settings.  As you see, he's being guided by an aboriginal Canadian in traditional clothing,  showing the ideal image of the Mountie as the ambassador of Canada's government to it's people.  Whether that's as true in life as it is in these great photos is a topic for others to discuss,  but I love this little bit of swag!

Every day that I live, and this surprises me all the time,  I find out about incredible and rare movies that look really amazing.  I don't mean another Jimmy Stewart or Bogart movie (which I love),  but colourful (usually out-of-print) epics, starring guys like Franco Nero, John Saxon, Shintaro Katsu, or Cameron Mitchell. So many stellar actors,  so many killer genres;  Peplums,  Silents,  Poliziotteschi films, British WWII pictures,  B-reels, and Chambara.  So many great stories!

Mountie movies are no different.  There are so many more than one would think;  every era has it's Mountie movies.  In fact, the most recent I know about is the low-budget revenge story The Mountie (The Way of the West) made in 2011 (watch a clip HERE)!   I'm picking my way through all of the Mountie-themed pictures available,  and along the way I discover so many more...some of which are hard-to-find.

Well,  here's a trio of wish-list reviews of Mountie pictures that I'm dying to see!

#1

When I read that TCM had screened the promising Dick Foran Mountie epic Heart of the North,  I was hopeful that there had been a DVD release at some point.  I was sorely disappointed.  The trailer is on the TCM website,  and dammit,  it looks amazing.

Dick Foran plays Sgt. Alan Baker, sent out on a hunt for the shooters of a fellow Mountie. His squad sorely undermanned,  there's an ambush, and things go downhill from there.  I don't know much more than that,  but what more would one need?

There's a great cast,  including the amusing Allen Jenkins (a smart sideman in many a 30's/40's movie, including a fave of mine,  1942's They All Kissed the Bride),  and Patric Knowles (Will Scarlett in The Adventures of Robin Hood, and Lord Mountbatten in The Devil's Brigade).  By all reports,  it's an amazing-looking film,  with great songs, and some excellent action.  Foran was an awesome Cowboy-type crooner, and he usually had at least one song in every movie.

This is really my sort of classic movie...I'd love to have it on DVD.

#2            NOW SEEN!!!! (review soon)

Well, we've had Alan Ladd as a Mountie (Saskatchewan), Tyrone Power (Pony Soldier, AKA MacDonald of the Canadian Mounties), and Errol Flynn (Northern Pursuit), so it didn't surprise me a bit (ok, maybe a little) that the hardboiled crooner Dick Powell had  taken a turn in the scarlet jacket!

Based on the novel Mrs. Mike, the Story of Katherine Mary Flannigan,  written by Benedict and Nancy Freedman,  it details the (supposed) actual events in the life of a woman married to a Canadian Mountie in the earliest bit of the 20th century.  It's a tale of love and hardship in all of it's incarnations,  though many of the details have been changed for dramatic effect.  When asked about the novel,  the Mounties involved in the "real life" story proclaimed it to be quite fictional.

None of this has anyhing to do with me wanting to see Dick Powell as a Mountie, of course!  What I've seen of it is classic Hollywood fun;  you can see an 8-minute intro clip on YouTube, and don't be surprised if you wanna see the rest!

#3

A movie with Robert Ryan and John Dehner as Mounties?  Where,  for Pete's sake,  does a guy sign up for a match-up like this one?  The Canadians is a 1961 production, directed by Burt Kennedy, the madman at the helm of some solid cowboy pictures, including The Train Robbers (1973), The War Wagon (1967), and The Rounders (1965).  I'd see it on the strength of that info alone,  but the cast and the subject matter make it a viewing must.  Both Dehner and Ryan are two of the great unsung heroes of  Hollywood, making everything better by their presence;  I can only imagine how it will be with both of them headlining a film!

I've only managed to see one 30-second clip, dubbed in French,  but I'll be damned if it doesn't look incredible! 

I have mixed feelings about this picture.  I'm a mad Errol Flynn fan,  a fan of Canadian Mountie movies,  and on top of that,  I have a certain special spot in my heart for WWII movies written during the war...anything to boot Hitler in the arse, wot?  Well,  Northern Pursuit has all the fixin's for a killer propaganda actioner:  enemy agents on homeland soil, stalwart good guys,  hidden weapons,  Nazis,  and rampant double-agentry.

Unfortunately it left me a bit flat.

The film begins promisingly, with a team of German spies en route to a secret stash of enemy technology hidden before the war.  Their plans go amiss when all but one of the party are killed by an avalanche;  the remaining Nazi stumbles across the wilderness until he succumbs to the elements.  He's found and detained by two Canadian Mounties,  one of them being Corporal Steve Wagner,  played by Errol Flynn.

To shorten things a bit, Flynn's character,  a Canadian of German extraction,  is accused of being on the side of the Nazi he captured,  Hugo von Keller (well played by Helmut Dantine),  and is set up for a treason trial by his own people. Everyone that he knew outside the police,  including his lovely fiance (played by the stunning Laura McBain),  goes along believing that he's actually become a turncoat. He jumps bail as per a secret R.C.M.P.  plan,  then is set out as bait for the Nazis, to tempt them into drawing him onto their side.  It wasn't a surprising plot turn, of course, as many German-Americans were suspected and shunned because of their backgrounds,  but I think I may have expected something different. I was hoping for a deadly hunt through the frosty wilds of the north,  but it turned out to be a bit more like I Was a Communist for the FBI than I had hoped for.  The acting is really super,  there is some nice action,  and it isn't afraid to go to very dark places,  but somewhere along the line I faltered.

This isn't an atypical reaction to a Raoul Walsh movie for me,  as he does challenge his viewers in a number of interesting ways.  He's fond of twists and a bit of an indirect storyline,  but I think, overall,  it's this quality that can make many of his films so great. He's no stranger to the Canadian Mountie movie either,  having directed Alan Ladd in the stellar 1954 picture Saskatchewan, also known as O'Rourke of the Royal Mounted.

It isn't often that I wish for a plot to be simpler than filmed,  but I do in this case.  It's still a very good movie,  but the espionage angle made it just a little too convoluted to be fully enjoyable.  This time anyway.  I'll give it a year or two and see what I think then.

I recommend that you give it a shot...it'll probably hit you just right.

Hot on the heels of my celebration of Tyrone Power's birthday this week, in which I wrote about Power's amazing turn in the red coat (albeit in the British army in India),  I want to wish Gary Cooper a happy birthday as well!  It's fun to have the opportunity to celebrate two incredible actors, and each in connection to the scarlet.

In the fantastic Northwestern North West Mounted Police,  Gary Cooper plays Texas Ranger Dusty Rivers, on assignment in Canada,  on the trail of the murderer Jacques Corbeau (played by the blunt-faced character actor George Bancroft).  As it turns out,  Corbeau is one of a trio of Métis (also called half-breeds in the film) revolutionaries,  intent on rebelling against the British Empire and starting an independent government.   Historically, though the Métis are the descendants of European settlers and aboriginal Canadians, they have no recognised status (unlike relatively pure-blooded natives);  in fact,  by some definitions, currently half of Canada are Métis, as at least 50% are of mixed blood.  At the time in which the film is set it was apparently a clearer distinction, as evidenced by the real-life North-West Rebellion upon which this film was based. 

Marshall Rivers reports the the fort where the Canadian Mounties are stationed,  just in time for Corbeau to join with the Métis rebel Louis Riel (now a schoolteacher) returning some years after having failed in his first attempt at insurrection (the Red River Uprising, also known as the First Riel Rebellion).  There Rivers meets the super-Mountie Sergeant Jim Brett, played by the very cool Preston Foster...and the fun really begins!

Directed by Cecil B. DeMille,  this was his first colour feature, as well as Cooper's.  The Technicolor is gorgeous (as it usually was in the movies of the time),  and it seems to have been created to make the Canadian Mountie look his best.  The script was fun and pretty tight,  though there were a few lagging bits,  mostly related to the romantic scenes.  What I enjoyed most was the fun banter between Texas Ranger Rivers and the Mounties.  Some fun Uncle Sam vs "The Queen" comments zinging back and forth.  The actors seemed like they were having quite a bit of fun!

Although this is technically Cooper's vehicle (and he is AMAZING),  I think the guy that shines best is Preston Foster.  He's so amazingly masculine and driven that his uncompromisingly honourable and courageous Sgt. Brett never strikes a wrong note.  In fact,  it took a guy with Cooper's presence for Foster not to run away with the whole thing!  As it stands,  they made a good pair,  each trying to out-hero the other.  That camaraderie is very exciting to watch.  It's a good choice for a birthday party!  This is one of the best Mountie-related movies that I've yet seen.  The Mountie mythos is given it's full due,  right down to 'always getting their man'.

Of course,  like the "regular" western,  there are sociopolitical issues inherent to the story that might, for some, make it difficult to watch.  Lots of people of many cultural backgrounds died to create modern America and,  it seems,  Canada,  and those stories are filled with conflict and moral ambiguities.  The British Empire spawned a lot of those stories and issues, as all empires tend to do.  I,  for one,  don't let myself get involved with those issues;  I take the story as it is, and I roll with it. North West Mounted Police is quite an exciting story to roll with!

It may be one of the best Mountie pictures possible...it's THAT good.

As a fun side note,  the fiddling tradition of the Métis is becoming more well known amongst lovers of folk music.  There is a wonderful documentary on the subject, called Medicine Fiddle,  and it can be viewed by clicking on the image to the right.  It's an interesting sound, very similar to other Canadian fiddle styles, but with its own flavour.  Unfortunately the folkies in America have taken it on, so it will be ruined soon...experience it while you can.

Learn about the first Riel Rebellion HERE
Learn about the second Riel Rebellion HERE

An R.C.M.P. Hockey puck?  Of course!  Why?  Because it's awesome,  that's why!  Ice Hockey is basically THE sport of Canada;  so Iconic,  known worldwide,  just like the Mounties themselves!

I got this on a whim,  looking for an odd item to flesh out my collection.  Nothing worse than a dull collection of anything,  wot? 

It's rolling quite nicely!