Yankee Pasha

A light and so-so adventure adventure movie , set mostly in Morocco about an adventurer who sets out to recover his lost love. This routine and agreeable film but with no too much interest movie turns out to be entertaining and amusing enough. In the picture there are fights, combats, swordsplay, betrayals, and lots of noisy action, including a spectacular attack on the enemy fortress . Salem, Massachusetts, 1800. Mountaineer trapper Jason Starbuck (Jeff Chandler) rides into town with furs to sell and dreams to fulfill. Shortly after , he falls in love with Roxana Reil (Rhonda Fleming) , a wealthy and gorgeous girl who struggles for getting her lover , as she surprisingly goes France to await Jason . Then , Roxana's ship is assaulted by sea pirates, subsequently caught into slavery in Morocco , and sold to a Moroccan harem, there she is taken by Omar Id-Din's (Rex Reason) , Sultan's lieutenant . Jason goes after her to Morocco and must win the support of the sultan (Lee J. Cobb) in order to go on his efforts to locate and rescue her. Every passionate moment of the strangest adventure ever told !

Enjoyable Oriental adventure movie with major wonders, noisy action, pursuits , sword-play and spectacular fights, though the flick can not be taking itself entirely seriously . This film is made at one time, in which Universal International Pictures was a studio quite noted for its Oriental or Eastern adventure movies and here manages to bring a decent yarn, though neither notable, nor extraordinary, but acceptable . As this one results to be an Oriental action/adventure with usual actors of the genre, ordinary ingredients, and proceedings are very much oh the light-hearted side. Based on an enormous novel by Edison Marshall and compressed into around 90 minutes with no really losing much of the story. Stars the handsome Jeff Chandler as trapper Jason Starbuck who falls for a beautiful Massachusetts girl , and he has to rescue her from slavery when sea pirates capture her . Jeff starred various films until his early death at 42 while shooting Merril's Marauders . He performed various genres particularly Adventure, Wartime and Western, such as : Away all boats, Man in the shadow, Because of you, The Jayhawkers, Red ball express, Return to Peyton Place, being especially famous for playing chief Cochise in Broken arrow , The battle of Apache Pass, Taza son of Cochise, for whom the grey-hair had won considerable popularity . And what better co-starring could there have been than the sweet redhair Rhonda Fleming , here performing a smoldering, passionate princess who breaks her previous engagement and leaves for France. She along with Maureen O'Hara , Yvonne de Carlo were three of the best action women and swashbuckleresses in the Hollywood business . As she acted especially in adventure , swashbucklers and Film Noir . She has appeared in over 40 films, including David O. Selznick's Spellbound (1945), directed by Alfred Hitchcock; Jacques Tourneur's Out of the past (1947); and Robert Siodmak's Spiral staircase (1946). She later got starring roles in such classics as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1948), Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957), While the cily sleeps (1958), Pony Express (1953), Slightly Scarlet (1956), Mientras Nueva York duerme (1956) and The big circus (1959) . Later on , she played in TV as guest-star on numerous television series, including Wagon train (1957), Police woman (1974), Love boat(1977), Last Hours Before Morning (1975) and a two-hour special of McMillan and wife (1971). Both of whom are well accompanied by a good support cast , such as : the gorgeous and likeable Mamie Van Doren who steals the show as a jealous slave , the miscasted Lee J. Cobb, the nasty Rex Reason ,Benny Rubin , Arthur Space, Philip Van Zandt , Tudor Owen , among others .



It packs a colorful and gleaming cinematography in Technicolor by Carl E. Guthrie . As well as vibrant and thrilling musical score from Universal's regular : Hans J. Salter , William Lava , Milton Rosen , though uncredited .The motion picture produced by Howard Christie for Universal Pictures , was professionally directed by Joseph Pevney , but with no much originality . Joseph Pevney was a notorious actor and director who born on September 15, 1911 in New York City, and he died on May 18, 2008 in Palm Desert, California . After World War II he acted with Paul Muni's Los Angeles-based "Key Largo" troupe. He acted in only five films (1946-1950), all of them films noir, his first as a piano-playing killer in Nocturno (1946). He spent most of his career behind the camera and his first film as a director was Shakedown (1950) in which he makes a Hitchcock-style cameo as Keller the reporter, his last on-screen part. He was a director and actor, being especially known for Star Trek (1966), Tammy, and the bachelor (1957) and The man of one thousand faces (1957) . Pevney directed a lot of movies of all kinds of genres such as Wartime : Torpedo run , Away all boats , Air cadet. Adventures as Yankee Pasha , Tammy , Twilight for the God, Congo crossing ,Ring circus , Legion of desert . Western : Lady from Texas , The plunderers . Thriller : Undercover girl , Flesh and fury , Man of a thousand faces , Iron Man , Shakedown , The strange Door , 6 bridges to cross , Istanbul. After spending the 1950s as a contract director at Universal, he switched to television where his early credits include five episodes of Alfred Hitchcock presents (1962). Rating . 5.5/10 , acceptable and passable . The film will appeal to Jeff Chandler and Rhonda Fleming fans . Worthwhie watching.

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.

Mountain man Jeff Chandler comes down from the hills to Salem, Georgia. He's going to go to see. He and Rhonda Fleming fall in love, and they arrange to meet in Marseilles. Her ship is captured by Barbary pirates, so Chandler goes to Morocco, charms sultan Lee J. Cobb by teaching his troops to shoot, and attempts to rescue Miss Fleming, despite the leader of the Janissaries, Rex Reason, and his slave, Mamie van Doren.

With the falling popularity of Arabian Nights adventures, Universal continued to amortize its investment in its Arabian Nights sets with this typically silly adventure, in which two Americans can fight off a hundred of anything else, and anyone can be stuck in a turban and false beard and be a Middle Eastern potentate. All the extras clash their scimitars above their head while fighting, and it's clear that director Joseph Pevney doesn't take any of it seriously, although Chandler seems to.

Watching so many of these 50s adventure movies, be they vehicles for cowboys or detectives, soldiers or swashbucklers, aliens or monsters, were like reading so much of the pulp fiction of the day. Rather than spending days reading a book, you could spend a couple of hours whisked away to a fantasy land with some harmless adventure and thrills if not a lot of thought provoking ideas. Forty some years later after growing older and wiser, there are still those times when I wonder where Hollywood's current head is, and head back to comfortable familiar territory. I started watching these kind of movies about the time I reached puberty and needless to say, watching this movie with raging hormones was a thrilling experience back then. Rhonda Fleming is still my favorite actress all these years later, and Mamie Van Doren was one of my favorite 50s blond bombshells, so how can I say anything bad about a Technicolor movie that puts both of these women in harem outfits? Yeow! I always thought Rhonda was at her peak in The Gunfight at the OK Corral, but to this day one of my treasured possessions is an autographed publicity still of her in her harem outfit. Move over Jeannie, you've got company! Forget the hokum plot and go for the ride and check out two of the greatest harem beauties ever.