This is a remake of "Red Dust" from the 1930s and Clark Gable plays the same role -- the white professional guide through the African jungle who also collects animals for zoos and circuses. He's hired by a naive anthropologist and his wife, Kelly, to take them into the bush and shoot movies of gorillas and trap a baby gorilla to study back home.
Gable's dalliance with tough but good-natured Ava Gardner is interrupted but he doesn't mind, once he gets an eyeful of the delicate blond Grace Kelly. She's overwhelmed by the cloud of pheromones that follows Gable about and he, in turn, decides that this time it's for keeps.
But then there's that awkward business of letting the wimpy husband in on their plans. And that noisome Ava Gardner is always hanging around, all knowingly, making wisecracks about the new love affair. I mean, it gets racy too. Their truck passes a male elephant who trumpets and uncurls his trunk straight out into the air. "Reminds me of somebody I know," cracks Gardener.
In the end, Gable comes to his senses, tricks Kelly into loathing him, and marries the woman he was truly meant to be with, the one who is as resilient and durable as he is.
It wasn't an easy shoot. Director Ford was beginning to feel his age. Gable insisted on going off to hunt big game. Ford thought it was dangerous and stupid. Frank Sinatra, married to Ava Gardner at the time, showed up on location and everyone expected him to act like the Chairman of the Board -- "Here, pal, here's fifty; go take a hike." Instead, at Ford's request, he was put to use making spaghetti for the crew. Gable had been through much tribulation since "Red Dust", twenty years earlier, and had begun drinking, but he'd help up well, considering.
Grace Kelly should have been right for the part of the naive young wife. She looks appealing enough and seems frangible, as if anyone could break one of her long bones just be pressing it too hard, but she's allowed to overact. Ava Gardner never looked more attractive or sexier. Jean Harlow brought a note of stronger vulgarity to the role. Gardner seems a little too nice, despite the acidulous dialog.
The movie is entertaining and colorful but seems oddly dated. Every movie about Africa is compelled to give us shots of African animals that, I suppose, a hundred years earlier were still novel. Yes, that's a cheetah, alright. We saw a National Geographic Special about cheetahs just last week. Fastest mammals on earth, y'know? They're no longer gape worthy. They have to play some part in the story if we're going to pay attention any longer.
And I don't know why people don't leave gorillas and other primates alone. There aren't that many of them left. We're destroying them through habitat destruction and poaching. Why would anyone want to point a high-powered rifle at a great ape and shoot it dead? They don't do anything but eat fruit and vegetables. I wonder if humans might have more compassion for gorillas if they saw them naked and shaved, as I did when I studied comparative primatology. The male appendage is positively tiny compared to ours. Well, that probably wouldn't make us pause before killing them anyway. We'll stop when there are no more left.
Anyway, it's a satisfying movie that ought to interest the family, assuming the kids don't grasp the symbolic significance of elephant trunks. "Red Dust" -- studio-bound as it is -- is still better.
Gable's dalliance with tough but good-natured Ava Gardner is interrupted but he doesn't mind, once he gets an eyeful of the delicate blond Grace Kelly. She's overwhelmed by the cloud of pheromones that follows Gable about and he, in turn, decides that this time it's for keeps.
But then there's that awkward business of letting the wimpy husband in on their plans. And that noisome Ava Gardner is always hanging around, all knowingly, making wisecracks about the new love affair. I mean, it gets racy too. Their truck passes a male elephant who trumpets and uncurls his trunk straight out into the air. "Reminds me of somebody I know," cracks Gardener.
In the end, Gable comes to his senses, tricks Kelly into loathing him, and marries the woman he was truly meant to be with, the one who is as resilient and durable as he is.
It wasn't an easy shoot. Director Ford was beginning to feel his age. Gable insisted on going off to hunt big game. Ford thought it was dangerous and stupid. Frank Sinatra, married to Ava Gardner at the time, showed up on location and everyone expected him to act like the Chairman of the Board -- "Here, pal, here's fifty; go take a hike." Instead, at Ford's request, he was put to use making spaghetti for the crew. Gable had been through much tribulation since "Red Dust", twenty years earlier, and had begun drinking, but he'd help up well, considering.
Grace Kelly should have been right for the part of the naive young wife. She looks appealing enough and seems frangible, as if anyone could break one of her long bones just be pressing it too hard, but she's allowed to overact. Ava Gardner never looked more attractive or sexier. Jean Harlow brought a note of stronger vulgarity to the role. Gardner seems a little too nice, despite the acidulous dialog.
The movie is entertaining and colorful but seems oddly dated. Every movie about Africa is compelled to give us shots of African animals that, I suppose, a hundred years earlier were still novel. Yes, that's a cheetah, alright. We saw a National Geographic Special about cheetahs just last week. Fastest mammals on earth, y'know? They're no longer gape worthy. They have to play some part in the story if we're going to pay attention any longer.
And I don't know why people don't leave gorillas and other primates alone. There aren't that many of them left. We're destroying them through habitat destruction and poaching. Why would anyone want to point a high-powered rifle at a great ape and shoot it dead? They don't do anything but eat fruit and vegetables. I wonder if humans might have more compassion for gorillas if they saw them naked and shaved, as I did when I studied comparative primatology. The male appendage is positively tiny compared to ours. Well, that probably wouldn't make us pause before killing them anyway. We'll stop when there are no more left.
Anyway, it's a satisfying movie that ought to interest the family, assuming the kids don't grasp the symbolic significance of elephant trunks. "Red Dust" -- studio-bound as it is -- is still better.