This Woman Is Mine

A strange hybrid of a movie, sort of Mutiny on the Bounty (with one of its stars, Franchot Tone) meets The Last of the Mohicans. It concerns an odd sort of love quandrangle with Tone, John Carroll & Walter Brennan all vying for the attentions of Carol Bruce, and has a very abrupt ending. Nigel Bruce is fifth billed as Duncan MacDougall and is sort of a double act with Leo G Carroll as two Scots businessmen. Bruce's accent work is a little better here, though not entirely consistent . Nevertheless, he has some droll moments wearing a kilt and playing the bagpipes.

That's the first time I watch this film, rather hard to find besides You Tube channel. It looks like a Paramount film, more than an Universal one, and the style, atmosphere, is typical of the forties, early or late. Franchot Tone is obviously the lead in this adventure western, and also ship yarn - after all sea adventures was a Frank Lloyd's trademark - very pleasant to discover, where comedy elements are agreeable to bear. John Carroll in a Frenchman character is maybe a miscast, but that doesn't restricts the quality of this feature. The second part is far more exciting than the first, more action packed. This is not the Frank Lloyd that I will remember the most, unlike MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, but it's worth seeing.

This very obscure film is a formula action piece - stowaway girl on all male voyage, two men on board in love with her, indians, etc. - you get the picture. It's set in the early 1800s and is the sort of yarn one would typically find Maureen O'Hara in. Universal did its usual flat barely competent job. Carol Bruce plays Julie Morgan (she would later achieve great acclaim as Julie LaVerne in the 1946 Bway revival of SHOW BOAT), a NY singer in love with dashing Canadian trapper, Ovide (John Carroll). Franchot Tone is John Jacob Astor's gentleman organizer of a fur trading expedition via ship to Oregon - Robert Stevens. Ovide romances Julie and lies about his Parisian home, so she stows away on a voyage (she thinks) to Paris to be with him. By the time she is discovered they are at sea and Captain Thorne (Walter Brennan) won't turn back. From then on it's pure formula. Bruce is delightful and beautiful in the role but sadly never found stardom on film, although her Broadway credits are solid. Brennan is excellent as a hard, embittered, go by the book sea captain and gives the only outstanding performance - had he not been Oscar nommed that year in support for SERGEANT YORK he may have had a crack at the award with this performance - it's that good.

Unless you're a fan of one of the stars it is not worth your while to seek this out. It did garner a deserved Oscar nom for a rousing and varied orchestral score. Frank Lloyd had lost his touch by the time he got to this one.

It seems like hardly any time at all since Franchot Tone was sailing aboard HMS "Bounty" but here he is, again, aboard a ship, again flirting with mutiny, on a trading mission to Oregon. It's captained by the fastidious but not inhumane "Thorne" (Walter Brennan) and crewed by a usual mix of seafaring types and by cocky Frenchman "de Montigny" (John Carroll). They have barely left the port when "Stevens" (Tone) discovers a stowaway in his cabin. "Julie" (Carol Bruce) has been snuck aboard by her French beau on the pretext that they are going to France. Before he gets a chance to get to the bottom of things, the captain walks in for some charts and, angry at being deceived, insists that she adopt the role of his cabin boy. The rest of the voyage sees her cause just about everyone to spar and spat before they arrive and the ship's two Scottish traders (Nigel Bruce and Leo G. Carroll) attempt to seduce the locals with trinkets and live piglets. Once their trading colony is set up, what adventurous elements to the plot there were largely disappear. It really just becomes a pretty flat love-triangle style of soap that Brennan looks uncomfortable with, Nigel and Leo G. Look vaguely perplexed by, whilst Tone and the other Carroll just coast along woodenly as they woo the final Carol in this story, who is meantime doing her best "Esmeralda" impersonation. The dialogue is not much to write home about but the seagoing score sometimes livens things up as they ease their halyards and tighten their mizen tops and it passes the time easily enough before an ending I could quite imagine Brennan had fancied doing half an hour earlier.

"This Woman is Mine" is a decent film, though not without a few problems. The biggest of which for me was John Carroll with his incredibly broad and overdone French-Canadian accent. Pepe le Pew and the Frito Bandito are about equally decent representations of foreigners! Additionally, a few of the characters seemed a bit hard to believe...the incredibly rigid Captain (Walter Brennan) and the woman from the title, for examples.

The film begins on shore. A playboy type, Ovide de Montigny (Carroll), convinces Julie (Carol Bruce) that he loves her...and she soon stows away aboard the vessel that he's signed on for a voyage of the Pacific Northwest. The Captain is NOT amused but here's a part of the film that seemed annoying...he blamed Robert (Franchot Tone) even though this was illogical and everyone insisted Robert was not to blame. The Captain was pretty much like this through the whole picture--irrational and quick to ignore everyone when it comes to his many premature conclusions. How is Robert to manage to survive this voyage with a nutty Captain, a woman and her jerk boyfriend??

The film has a lot of nice scenery and the story is modestly enjoyable. Not much more I feel like saying about this one.