Vintage Film Festival

Mogambo - (1953)

Cast

Clark Gable
Ava Gardner
Grace Kelly
Donald Sinden
Eric Pohlmann
Laurence Naismith

Director: John Ford

Synopsis

The lure of the jungle and romance get a sizzling workout in Mogambo and it's a socko package of entertainment, crammed with sexy two-fisted adventure.

While having its origin in the Wilson Collison play [Red Dust], this remake is fresh in locale and characterizations switching from the rubber plantations of Indo-China to the African veldt and updating the period.

John Lee Mahin's dialog and situations are unusually zippy and adult. Ava Gardner feeding a baby rhino and elephant, and her petulant storming at a pet boa constrictor to stay out of her ber, are good touches.

The romantic conflict boils up between the principals during a safari into gorilla country, where an anthropologist and his wife plan to do research. Clark Gable is the great white hunter leading the party. Gardner is the girl on the prowl for a man, and who has now settled on Gable. To get him she has to offset the sweeter charms of Grace Kelly, the wife, who also has become smitten with the Gable masculinity and is ready to walk out on Donald Sinden, the unexciting anthropologist. For the second time in Metro history, a picture has been made without a music score (King Solomon's Mines was the first) and none is needed as the sounds of the jungle and native rhythms are all that are required.

Review

By Brian Koller

What it's about. Clark Gable is a rugged, manly animal trapper in the African jungle. His adventures are interrupted, first by beautiful tease Ava Gardner, then by the winsome but ravishing Grace Kelly. Which one of our lovelies will land the big lug, apparently a good catch despite the fact he's old enough to be their father. Hint: the Hollywood Production Code was in effect in 1953, and Grace Kelly is wed to naive scientist Nordley (Donald Sinden). Prince Ranier came later.

How I felt about it. All your favorite African animals make cameo appearances. Lions, elephants, leopards, giraffes, zebras, hippos, rhinos, crocodiles, impalas. Even the secretary bird is a bit player, so Gardner can crack a joke about a femal secretary ducking the advances of a male executive..

We've already mentioned that Clark Gable is too old for the role, even though he was also the lead in the successful original version, Red Dust (1932). There, Gable ran a rubber plantation, a less cinematic premise but also one that doesn't involve capturing unlucky wildlife, and condemning them to prison (a zoo) or slavery (a circus).

But they say that power attracts, and certainly Gable is the big man on campus. For the crime of letting a panther escape, rather than tear off his limbs, Gable punches his less reliable white assistant, who naturally goes down for the count.

Assault is less likely to solve his greater problem, whether to go blonde or brunette. In this case, the brunette is more fun, but the blonde burns with an intense heat.Through it all, the odd man out isn't really Gardner, who gets to spar with all concerned while playing the role of heartbroken but chin up second choice lover. The sap is Kelly's husband, Nordley, who chalks up her refusal to sleep with him as a disinclination for African camp life. When he's out of the way, Kelly exchanges torrid glances with Gable, but doesn't go much further because she's a good girl at heart, and there were no 'R' rated films in 1953.

Left: Grace Kelly and Clark Gable

Even in Africa, it's a white man's world. Blacks are servants, scouts, laborers, hunters, and warriors. But they certainly aren't equals, and none appear to speak even broken English. However, Gable and his two fellow white trappers speak any native language fluently, regardless of which tribe they are obliged to exploit.

A good script, a famous cast, a legendary director. All the ingredients are there, but the recipe for greatness proves elusive once again. It's not just the use of animals as props and atmosphere, or Gardner's ceaseless badgering of whatever living being is closest to her (she needs a dog.) The problem comes back to the premise. The 1953 version of Clark Gable isn't such a great catch. Couldn't Ford have cast his buddy John Wayne instead?

Trailer