L'ultimo duello

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 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.

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.

"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.

John Jacob Astor is sending an expedition to Oregon to trade for furs and set up a post. His clerk, Franchot Tone, will join Scottish traders Nigel Bruce and Leo G. Carroll in the effort, to get some adventure for the quiet, bookish young man. When voyageur John Carroll smuggles singer Carol Bruce on board, disciplinarian captain Walter Brennan won't turn back to let her off. Instead he makes her cabin boy, and his wrath falls on Tone, when Carroll allows him to take the responsibility for the breach of decorum and naval rules.

It's one of the big "Manifest Destiny" movies of the late pre-War era, extolling what is called "American exceptionalism" and "diversity" these days. Cecil B. Demille turned out UNION PACIFIC; King Vidor NORTHERN PASSAGE; and Fritz Lang WESTERN UNION, all big epics with large casts of well-known performers. This Frank Lloyd production for Universal may seem a bit clunky, confined a bit by its black-and-white photography and its now stereotyped storyline, but it fits nicely into the category, and is full of of tension and excitement. Tone may be a bit old to play a role a lot like his in MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (which Lloyd also directed) and Carroll is hammy, but Brennan gives a beautiful performance as a Bligh-like captain, nuanced and evolving, capable of portraying a man recognizing his own failures. It's not a great movie, but it is a typically solid effort by Lloyd.