Yankee pascià

To begin with, I interrupted my ongoing parallel Luis Bunuel (Part 2) and "Euro-Cult" marathons to indulge in an old-fashioned Hollywood oater on the big screen. This was due to an unscheduled, but most welcome, invite by a couple of movie-buff friends of mine (who are actually my Dad's peers). Since we settled on which film we would be watching at the very last minute, I went into this knowing only the odd title (which I was familiar with alright, but it had somehow never cropped up for viewing until now) and the male lead involved (Jeff Chandler)…and, yet, I had to smile when, upon wondering if this was helmed by Joseph Pevney, his name actually turned up in the opening credits!

Being a Universal production, one has to remember that this sort of mindless crowd-pleasing fare used to be churned out virtually on an assembly-line during this era – with the slightest of trimmings to accommodate the studio's current top box-office draw (be it Chandler, Tony Curtis or Rock Hudson)! Similarly, several journeymen directors flourished there at the time, proving adept at practically every setting and storyline the executives could throw at them! Now, to get back to the single biggest coup of the film under review, it is the effortless blending of sure-fire formulas which rendered the whole most enjoyable: in fact, proceedings start off in a Western milieu, then the scene shifts to the high seas and a brief interlude of pirate action, before eventually settling into an Arabian Nights adventure! Without wishing to attribute undue subtext to an inherently modest product, I am sure it would have greatly pleased the Surrealists to witness its depiction of amour fou literally transcending genre conventions!

Anyway, here we find trapper Chandler and redhead Rhonda Fleming falling for each other virtually at first sight (though, typically, she is intended for another who unsurprisingly proves to be an arrogant bully). Soon enough, the two men engage in a horse race, which Chandler wins thanks to an Indian yelp (like the one Richard Dix gave in CIMARRON [1931]) which frightens his rival's steed! Sailing to Marseille with her father, she is kidnapped by pirates and sold into slavery to a Moroccan potentate (or, rather, an aspiring usurper) played by Rex Reason – here billed as Bart Roberts and later promoted to lead status for the sci-fi classic THIS ISLAND EARTH (1955)! The real ruler (an ill-at-ease Lee J. Cobb) fears his own army would not withstand a full-scale attack by Reason's forces. He is saved by the arrival of Chandler upon the scene, who offers to school his soldiers in quick-shooting tactics in exchange for a place at court in an effort to get wind of Fleming's whereabouts. For his services, Chandler is not only garbed in the latest Oriental fashion but gets acquainted with their customs (including owning a personal slave-girl in the shapely form of delightfully "cackling" yet jealously conniving Mamie Van Doren, also thankfully the closest thing here approximating comic relief) – prompting him to exclaim at one point, "I can Salaam with the best of them!"

As is to be expected, Chandler eventually regains Fleming and loses her once more to Reason, before himself falling into his clutches. Their obligatory showdown (by the way, there is also a cat-fight between the two girls over their supremacy in Chandler's harem!) takes place on the prison turret, with the villain predictably getting his just desserts by being impaled on a set of horns which protrude from the walls to prevent convicts from escaping! One thing which I noticed but forgot to tell my host (who is a Victor Mature fanatic) is that Reason's castle was, in all probability, the very same one to be featured (complete with a strategically-placed palm-tree) in Mature's own Universal-produced Arabian Nights epic THE VEILS OF BAGDAD (1953), and which had actually been one of the first titles we caught at his private cinema!

In fact, watching YANKEE PASHA – via a surprisingly well-preserved 16mm copy, despite the occasional image blurring and emulsion problems – in an ambiance which attempted to recreate the full theatrical Saturday matinée' experience (complete with walls adorned by vintage movie posters and musical accompaniment before the performance and during the reel-changing break) heightened the steady dose of unassuming colorful entertainment provided by the main feature. In conclusion, the career of silver-haired Jeff Chandler may have been short-lived but it proved incredibly prolific nevertheless: having checked just now, I have some 23 of his films lying unwatched in my collection – as opposed to the mere 7 which I have gotten under my belt so far! Given that this year marks the 50th anniversary of his tragic passing, I might make room for a well-deserved retrospective throughout my proposed generic viewings in 2011

Salem, Massachusetts, 1800. Mountaineer Jason Starbuck rides into town with furs to sell and dreams to fulfill. He falls in love with Roxana, who breaks her previous engagement and leaves for France to await Jason. Roxana's ship is attacked by pirates and she is sold into slavery in Morocco. Jason follows her to Morocco and must win the support of the sultan in order to continue his efforts to locate and rescue her.

Yankee Pasha starts off as a western with a mountain trapper getting into a horse race and falling for a woman, then later the location changes to sea with ships and pirates and then has a dollop of the Arabian nights adventure with harems cooing "oh master" - I liked the mix of these genres, keeping things fresh. It's got the usual Arab orientalist stuff but it's quite an entertaining romantic adventure with pirates, scimitars, beautiful women, shooting out on horseback and a sword clashing conflict. It's very much like a colourful pulp novel, all decked out in Technicolor.

Jeff Chandler is always a likeable presence, his films are always entertaining and his star presence is well-matched by red-haired Rhonda Fleming (she wears this daring white bikini number that had my red corpuscles running over time!) who looks suitably feisty and stressed when in the company of the evil Omar Id-Din (Rex Reason plays him in a comic book fashion). The training segment and the friendship of Chandler with Hassan should've been touched upon longer as it would strengthen the scene when Hassan comes to the rescue of Chandler who is imprisoned by Omar Id-Din.

I am not going to write the plot since most reviewers have already done it. Instead, I will try to provide other interesting data about this film that has not been mentioned by any of the other reviews. First of all let me to stick up for this entertaining movie that has everything you would ask to an adventure movie: action, romance, horse races, pirate attacks, scimitar duels, fights and humor. Based on Edison Marshall's much longer and blooded best seller, Yankee Pasha casts Jeff Chandler as frontierman John Starbuck and Rhonda Fleming as her beautiful love interest. Among other curiosities, Jeff Chandler, who had a really nice crooner voice, recorded the song I Should Care on Brunswick Records from the film. Mamie Van Doren plays Starbuck's slave in one of her first important roles. Although miles away from Marilyn, whom the studio planned to re-create, she plays her role nice enough to get her performance remembered. Rhonda Fleming looks superb in oriental outfits - the brief white bikini one so revealing that I am surprised censorships did aprove it. Another curiosity, several miss universe contestants were cast as the harem girls that are shown to Starbuck when he is looking for her love. Edison Marshall wrote lots of popular historical novels with lots of blood, sex, swashbucling and adventures in faraway places such as Caravan to Xanadu (about Marco Polo travels), the Viking, Pagan king (about king Arthur), Earth giant (about Hercules), the Great Smith about John Smith, Gipsy sixpence (Richard Burton), Infinite Woman (about Lola Montes), Benjamin Blake (turned into a movie, Son of fury, starring Tyrone Power). The fact that Yankee pasha action includes North America, Morocco and the Barbary coast (where berber pirates attacked United States ships as is also shown in 1950 movie Tripoli) is a fine example of Marshall around-the-world adventure stories. Although some things could have been improved such as the Sultan's army training process and how do they get so many rifles considering Starbuck only has one - Starbuck could have time to search for her fiancee while waiting to obtain more rifles i.e.- it is a good entertaining movie with nice performances and well worth a view.

I once read somewhere that when Jeff Chandler completed Yankee Buccaneer in 1952 there were a lot of action sequences left over. Like any other studio Universal never let anything go to waste so two years later Chandler wound up filming Yankee Pasha.

Fans of the stars should like Yankee Pasha. It's a romance novel about a frontiersman who follows his lady love across the Atlantic Ocean after a misunderstanding about the lady's true intentions. Rhonda Fleming is captured by Barbary Pirates and as redheads are a premium she catches the eye of Rex Reason the head of the Ottoman Sultan's local Jannisary forces in Morocco. His troops even have the Sultan of Morocco somewhat intimidated, the Moroccan Sultan being Lee J. Cobb.

Jeff Chandler is not going to let an ocean or Moslem custom about women Christian captives interfere with his pursuit of his lady love. Not even the Sultan's present of Mamie Van Doren to Chandler deters him one wit from his mission.

Van Doren is as annoying to the audience as she was to Chandler with her constant cackling. She was a beauty no doubt, but her acting talent left a lot to be desired. But this film isn't any great work of art. Blonds and redheads certainly add some spice to any harem.

If you like romance novels and are fans of the stars Yankee Pasha should work for you.

This movie begins in 1800 with a trapper named "Jason Starbuck" (Jeff Chandler) riding into the town of Salem, Massachusetts in order to sell his beaver pelts. While in town he meets and falls in love with a young woman named "Roxana Reil" (Rhonda Fleming) who is engaged to a man she doesn't love. So when the engagement is moved up by her fiancé Jason decides to leave town and go back to being a trapper. What he doesn't know is that Roxanna has decided to break off her engagement and to do that she convinces her father to take her overseas to Marseilles instead. On the way there, however, they are attacked by some Barbary pirates who subsequently sell her as a slave to a man named "Omar Id Din" (Bart Roberts) who puts her into his harem. However, upon hearing the news that Roxana has called off her engagement and then that her ship was taken by pirates, Jason immediately sets to find Roxana and rescue her from the Moors personally. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was an entertaining movie which would serve well as a Saturday matinée in the old days or as a late night movie on television today. But it clearly isn't a classic by any means due to the predictable plot or some of the rather unrealistic scenarios. That said, I have rated this movie accordingly. Average.