The talent behind Desert Pursuit (1952) is a portrait of postwar Hollywood in transition. Ex-studio contractees Virginia Grey and Wayne Morris spent the 1950s scrambling for work, finding most of it on television. Former Navy Air ace Morris is credited as an associate producer on the film as well. Best remembered for his late-career performance in Stanley Kubrick's Patrulla infernal (1957), Morris found himself in diminishing parts and died unexpectedly seven years later, at age 45. Director George Blair enjoyed a prolific career in B-pictures for outfits like Monogram and Republic, but after Desert Pursuit he almost immediately turned to episodic TV work. His last feature film was the quirky exploitation shocker El ojo diabólico (1960).
Desert Pursuit (1952) was shot on location in Death Valley, CA including Lone Pine and Olancha Dunes, and in the Sierra Mountains.
Independent producer Lindsley Parsons became interested in a novel by Kenneth Perkins that referenced a little-known episode in the settling of the West: The United States Camel Corps. The U.S. Army did indeed experiment with camels as pack animals, a project that was abandoned with the interruption of the Civil War. Two movies made in the 1950s attempted to exploit the odd historical chapter --- United Artists' Western Southwest Passage (1954), starring Rod Cameron, was originally in 3-D --- but coming first was the Monogram release Desert Pursuit (1952), a wilderness chase story set in 1870.
A written onscreen foreword explains that Jefferson Davis organized the American Camel Corps during the Civil War to map the southern route across the deserts of Texas into California. When the railroad came, the corps was disbanded and some of the camels escaped into the desert.
PROLOGUE: "In 1856 Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War, organized the American Camel Corps of the United States Army which mapped the southern route across the plains and deserts from Texas to California."
"The building of the transcontinental railroad ended usefulness of the Camel Corps, and the animals were sold to private enterprise or escaped into the Southwestern desert where camels were still seen by lonely prospectors more than a decade later."
PROLOGUE: "In 1856 Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War, organized the American Camel Corps of the United States Army which mapped the southern route across the plains and deserts from Texas to California."
"The building of the transcontinental railroad ended usefulness of the Camel Corps, and the animals were sold to private enterprise or escaped into the Southwestern desert where camels were still seen by lonely prospectors more than a decade later."