Tarzan Triumphs

I mentioned some months back that TCM would be running the at least some of the Tarzan movies during the Saturday matinee block, and that I had one of them on my DVR to do a review on when it came up on TCM again. That movie is Tarzan Triumps, which is getting its next TCM airing tomorrow, Dec. 6, at 10:00 AM.

Johnny Weismuller appears again as Tarzan, together with Johnny Sheffield as Boy, although the series has moved from MGM to RKO. The means that Maureen O'Sullivan, who played Jane, couldn't come along since she was still under contract to MGM. So Jane is back in the UK to look after her mother what with there being a war on. Tarzan, who lived an idyllic life away from western influence, would presumably just like to go on living that life, not even being bothered by the people from the next tribe over. That would be the city of Palandria, whose princess Zandra (Frances Gifford since the movie neeeds some female eye candy as well) rescues Boy from a cliff but needs to be rescued by Tarzan.

Not long after this opening sequence introducing Zandra, a plane flies overhead. It's filled with Nazis, who need critical raw minerals to keep the war effort going. They send in a paratrooper, Lt. Schmidt, who gets injured in the middle of the jungle and is eventually found by Tarzan who saw the plane flying overhead and then saw it crash. Tarzan saves the paratrooper, not realizing he's a Nazi and that he's going to be in danger. He may not care for the war, but the war certainly cares about him. Schmidt tries to radio for help, but Cheeta the chimp is smart and steals a critical part that Schmidt would need to work the radio, and that's going to bring more Nazis looking for Schmidt and the missing part of the radio.

Meanwhile, a larger group of Nazis has shown up in Palandria looking for those raw materials, and willing to subjugate the people of Palandria to get those metals. Zandra escapes, but gets injured in the process. She wants to tell Tarzan about the danger that's about to face him, but Tarzan still doesn't care, wanting to live in peace unmolested by anybody else. Boy is bright enough to listen to Zandra, and even tries to help her convince Tarzan that something's terribly wrong, but these attempts only make Tarzan angrier.

But then the Nazis show up looking for their radio, and kidnap Boy in the process. They take Boy back to Palandria and torture him to try to find out where that lost radio part is. It's only when Tarzan loses Boy that he's spurred into action. He hasn't cared about the war, but now that it affects him personally, he can do something to fight the bad guys. Of course, this being a World War II movie, you know that Tarzan is going to win and the Nazis lose.

Tarzan Triumphs is no great shakes, but it's also not as laughably bad as some might have you believe when they criticize the movie series for melding Tarzan with a World War II morale booster. The idea of having the interlopers be Nazis is no dumber than having them be anything else. And the Allies did have good reason to be worried that the Germans would try to advance south looking for raw materials. But there are people out there who see the all-consuming war effort from the point of view of 80 years in the future, and feel the need to show how much better they are than the "rah-rah" patriotism of the day. Ultimately, Tarzan Triumphs is a silly little B movie that's enjoyable enough; had it been about somebody other than the Tarzan character it would probably be unremembered much like a lot of other B movies from the era.

I Married an Angel

I've mentioned on a few occasions that I'm not the biggest fan of the singing of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. But I do watch their movies to do posts on here because the pair were a big thing back in the 1930s and I feel a bit of an obligation to see a wide variety of movies to post on here. So I recorded their final film, I Married an Angel, the last time it showed up on TCM, and recently got around to watching it. It's getting another airing on TCM early tomorrow morning (Dec. 5) at 3:45 AM, or overnight tonight if that's the way you look at things.

I Married an Angel was released in the summer of 1942, several months after the US entered World War II, but is based on a play turned into a Rodgers and Hart musical in 1938, which is why the opening informs us the story is set in Budapest in those gay times of years gone past. Anna Zador (Jeanette MacDonald) works as a secretary at the Palaffi bank, run by the third generation of Count Palaffis, with the current Count Palaffi played by Neslon Eddy. Anna has a crush on the Count, and brings wildflowers from the country to his office every morning, but Palaffi's executive assistant Marika (Mona Maris) says the count doesn't notice them. Or Anna, who is really only in the typing pool so why would she be noticed by the count? Besides, Marika is pretty certain the count is interested in her.

In fact, the Count is interested in a lot of pretty, upper-class women to the point that people see him as a sort of playboy, with the most important among such people being the largest depositors in the bank. They could move their assets elsewhere, which would start a run on the bank that would likely cripple it. So he really ought to get married and settle down. When another of the assistants, Whiskers (Reginald Owen) hears that the count is not only not planning on settling down but hosting an extravagant costume party for his birthday, Whiskers has Marika give an invitation to a regular bank worker -- Anna, of course -- to make it seem at least a bit more like a work function.

Anna doesn't have the money for the sort of costume that people wear to these high-class costume balls in movies of this era, so she wears a largely homemade angel costume instead. This subjects her to some ridicule because she clearly doesn't fit in, and didn't necessarily want to be in the spotlight like this even if it allowed her to get close to the count for one night. What Anna doesn't know is that Palaffi had said that the only woman he'd ever marry would have to be a real angel. So during the party he goes into one of the drawing rooms while everyone else is out on the terraces and lawns partying away, and falls asleep and starts dreaming. (I'm not giving anything away here since in the context of the movie, we know that what follows is an extended dream.)

In the dream, Anna comes back to him as an actual angel, named Brigitta, telling Palaffi that she's just the sort of angel that Palaffi needs to marry to save the bank. Palaffi marries her and takes her on a honeymoon to Paris, although he finds out that being married to an angel isn't all he bargained for. The first issue is that the angel is just too virtuous, with the sort of inability to lie that leads to her telling truths that people don't want to hear. If anything, that's going to make the investors more likely to want to start a run on the bank. Of course, we know that this is the sort of movie that's going to have a happy ending, with several songs along the way for both MacDonald and Eddy.

To be honest, I Married an Angel isn't exactly a bad movie, although my view of the sort of singing that MacDonald and Eddy do stands. It's just not my thing. As stated above, the movie was released in the summer of 1942, and I get the impression that public tastes were really changing, accelerated by the US entry into World War II. Several stars of the 1930s (notably Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer) saw the writing on the wall and retired, but I think MacDonald and Eddy were suffering the same fate if you will, only without a voluntary retirement. I Married an Angel was a box office failure and gets panned by the critics, but I don't think it's any worse than the other MacDonald/Eddy movies I've seen.

For some values of "nice"

Some months back, TCM ran a Sunday night double feature of films starring Deanna Durbin. The first was It Started with Eve, but when I sat down to watch it I had the distinct feeling I'd seen it before. So instead I watched the other, Nice Girl?, to do the obligatory post on here. Now, as it turns out, I have seen It Started With Eve, but have never done a post on it; I wouldn't be surprised if the last time it was on TCM was before I started blogging since Deanna Durbin was at Universal and TCM doesn't get the rights to their films all that often. So I'll watch it again and eventually do a post on it.

Durbin plays Jane Dara, middle daughter in a family that is somehow middle class enough to have a maid Cora (Helen Broderick), as well as a father Oliver (Robert Benchley) who is doing experiments on the diets of rabbits that Jane helps with. Indeed, Dad is hoping to get a fellowship with a prestigious institute in New York to be able to help fund his studies. Jane has a boyfriend in Don Webb (a young Robert Stack), who has an interest in cars and could probably make a reasonable living as an auto mechanic, although I get the impression that even in those days this wasn't necessarily the profession a middle class man would want his daughter to marry.

A running subplot is Cora's relationship, or her being pursued by, the mailman Hector (Walter Brennan), who also leads the town's band that meets in the small-town park band shell for holidays like July 4, this being one of those Connecticut small towns that populated Hollywood movies like this in the years leading up to World War II. Hector brings Oliver a special delivery letter informing him that the foundation is sending a man from New York to look over the experiments with a view to the foundation funding these experiments. Jane goes to the train station to pick that man up: Richard Calvert (Franchot Tone). Richard has done research on various pygmy populations and the extent to which diet has made them short, and this has caused him to travel all over the world (and as we'll see later, have an impossibly big New York apartment for someone of his employment). That travel makes him sophisticated in the eyes of the three daughters, all of whom put on airs in the hopes that he'll take an interest in them, even if they're all too young for him.

Eventually it's time for Calvert to go back to New York, and Jane offers to drive him to the train station, in Don's convertible since Don's working on her car. However, she sabotages the convertible so that it won't get to the station on time, meaning she has to drive him to New York. They get stuck in the rain, and in a series of coincidences, Jane winds up wearing a pair of pajamas belonging to Richard's sister while her own clothes are drying. Then when Calvert makes it clear there's no romantic interest between them, Jane drives home in the middle of the night, arriving home at a scandalous time and making the whole town gossip about her.

Now, this is a Deanna Durbin movie, so we know that everything is going to come out right in the end. But to see exactly how that's going to happen, you'll have to watch for youreself. Nice Girl? is the sort of movie that I can see why it would appeal to fans of Deanna Durbin, especially back in 1941 when it was released. However, I can also see why Deanna Durbin was growing tired of these ingenue roles and wanted something more talent-stretching. This being Deanna Durbin, there are also several opportunities for her to sing, which again fans of hers will enjoy. The misunderstandings plot doesn't always work, and to me it felt wrapped up a bit too quickly. But for the most part Nice Girl? is simply inoffensive fun.

Maid for a Day

I've mentioned a couple of times now that I've been recording some of the shorts the TCM Saturday matinee block for when I want to blog about something on a day where I have another post that's not going to be a traditional review going up. We've got that again today, and this time the short in question is a Vitaphone two-reeler, Maid for a Day.

Peter Lind Hayes, credited here as just Lind Hayes, plays Freddie Hayden, a college student who wants to become a radio star, this being the mid-1930s. Needless to say, he gets teased by his roommates, although he tells them about the big hit his mother Grace (played by Peter's real-life mother Grace Hayes) had on stage with a song called "My Man Is on the River", performed on a stage with a curtain that depicts black people eating watermelons which of course everybody reviewing the movie today has to mention.

Grace is now working as a maid out on Long Island, where she serves a pair of society matrons. One of course, is her boss, while the other one is the boss' friend, who is running a bizarre little charity scheme, if you want to call it a charity. It's designed to set up a special beach just for the servants, although the real point of it is so that the rich people can have their own private beach without the servants seeing them. In any case, Freddie has gotten a job performing at that benefit radio show, which has elaborate musical numbers because of the live audience that's paying to show up.

It's only revealed later that Grace took on the job of a maid under an assumed identity to learn about maids for a performance she's going to give at some point in the future. She's saved her money from performing, and is somehow able to snag a ticket to the benefit. She has one of the ushers give a message to the producer telling him who she really is, which gets her backstage and ultimately performin in the finale, which just happens to be the song her son is doing.

I'd really only noticed Peter Lind Hayes in the movies he did when he was rather older, notably The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T and the terrible Once You Kiss a Stranger, so seeing him here so young is interesting. Grace Hayes isn't the best, but she's not exactly bad either. The songs are all rather odd choices for a short like this, notably one called "Two Cigarettes in the Dark". WIth all that, I can understand why Maid for a Day is even less remembered than other Vitaphone two-reelers.

TCM Star of the Month December 2025: Merle Oberon

Merle Oberon as Cathy in Wuthering Heights (Dec. 16, 8:00 PM)

Once again, we're into a new month, which as always means it's time for a new Star of the Month. For December, that Star of the Month is Merle Oberon, who was last TCM's Star of the Month back in early 2015. Oberon's movies will be airing on four of the five Tuesday evenings in December. There's going to be a break on December 23, since this being December, TCM has its annual marathon of Christmas movies that I'll be mentioning again when we actually get to the marathon.

TCM is only airing 17 of Oberon's movies, as far as I can tell. There are a couple of movies in the tribute that I'm not certain whether I've seen yet, so I'll be recording them. There's also at least one that's on my DVR that's airing, so I've already watched it and schedule the post for when it actually airs in a few weeks time. There also seem to be a few omissions of movies that I've blogged about before, which makes me wonder a bit about TCM's finances and what they're able to get the rights to. The Cowboy and the Lady was released by United Artists, although IMDb says that it got a DVD release from Warner Home Video back in 2016; I don't know whether that would be the Warner Archive or not. Also not showing up this month is A Song to Remember, which was released by Columbia. I'm not surprised the Fox stuff didn't show up; I'm not certain whether TCM would have to negotiate with Disney to be able to show that stuff nowadays since I don't recall how much of the back library Disney got when they bought part of Fox.

Glory Alley

I've stated two different general thoughts on MGM over the years. One is that, as probably the most prestigious Hollywood studio, they brought a lot of gloss to movies that would have benefitied from having no gloss. The other is that, once the Freed Unit musicals really got going, it was the other stuff made that's really a lot more interesting. Both of those thought came to mind as I was watching Glory Alley.

The movie is ostensibly set in New Orleans, although it's the MGM backlot's version of New Orleans, which has all the connotations you can think of. Working for one of the newspapers, although about to retire, is columnist Gabe Jordan (John McIntire), who tells his editor that he's never told the full story of boxer Socks Barbararossa (Ralph Meeker). So, as you can guess, we're about to get a flashback that tells us... the rest of the story. Wait, this isn't Paul Harvey, either the radio man or the character actor.

Some time in the past, before the Korean War (the movie was released in June 1952), Socks is about to fight a title bout. But as he's in the ring, he looks up at the very bright ring lights, and realizes... he can't go ahead with the fight! So he just gets out of the ring right then and there and goes to his dressing room in the basement to hide from everyone. Not quite everyone; there's his manager Peppi (Gilbert Roland), trainer of sorts Shadow (Louis Armstrong), girlfriend Angela (Leslie Caron), and Angela's blind father The Judge (Kurt Kasznar). Now, since Leslie Caron had a French accent, she and her dad are portrayed as having fled France when the Nazis occupied it, with Dad hoping to get the family assets back and Angela training to become a nurse to get the money for Dad to have an operation. Except that that last bit is only what Dad thinks; Angela in fact dances in one of the dive nightclubs which brings in rather more money. Anyhow, why did Socks just up and leave the ring? The full reason isn't explained until the end of the movie, but Socks looks at himself in the mirror and sees some of the toll boxing has already taken from him.

Peppi buys a bar of his own while Socks lets himself go, drinking heavily to the point that he's going to have to accept a pity job at Peppi's place. Peppi holds the contract of one other fighter, "Newsboy", which he gives to Socks. Socks intends to raffle off the contract to get some money and to get out of the boxing game for good, but he and Newsboy both get drafted to serve over in Korea. Then, in a truly nutty twist, Socks is able to show some real bravery and win the Congressional Medal of Honor, except that's an award he doesn't really want although he can't really sell it legally to make money.

Socks returns from Korea, and eventually tells Angela the real reason why he left the ring just as he was about to fight for the title, and... everyone lives happily ever after? Yes, basically that's what happens, and the "official" reason Socks gives for running away from that previous title fight is one that makes no sense.

In fact, the movie as a whole doesn't make much sense, seeing as how it veers wildly from one genre to the next. The characterizations are also all wrong. Ralph Meeker is asked to play something much too gentlemanly for a boxer who came up from poverty. Leslie Caron was most likely cast here because it was just after An American in Paris made her big. With her French accent, the studio had to make her character French, necessitating that back story. The melodrama with Dad's operation is an odd thing to shoehorn in here. Even worse is how the movie suddenly switches to the Korean War, looking like a cheap B movie at the same time it's doing this.

So Glory Alley goes wrong in so many ways, and yet that's something that actually makes the movie interesting, to watch how it goes so badly wrong. Not good, mind you, but interesting nevertheless.

A Dangerous Profession

George Raft was TCM's Star of the Month in January 2025, and as always that gave me the chance to record a couple of his movies that I hadn't blogged about before, including the noirish movie A Dangerous Profession. Eventually I got around to watching it and writing up this post to schedule some time in advance.

The movie opens up with a monologue narrated by Los Angeles police detective Nick Farrone (Jim Backus) discussing the bail bond industry and how it's quite the money spinner, with firms such as that of Joe Farley (Pat O'Brien) and Vince Kane (George Raft). Kane, for his part, is a former police detective himself before leaving the force to join the bail bond industry and living the sort of life that the police probably wouldn't approve of. Indeed, it's at a craps game that Kane is contacted by Ferrone.

Ferrone is taken to the home of Claude Brackett (Bill Williams), a stockbrocker who has just been arrested in a case involving stolen bonds and that's going to involve a fairly substantial bail of the sort that a bail bond company lke Farley-Kane may be able to help with. However, when Kane gets there, he realizes that Claude's wife Lucy (Ella Raines) is in fact his own former girlfriend. Complicating matters is the fact that Claude and Lucy were separated from each other up until Claude got arrested for the robbery.

Bail is high, and Lucy can't raise all the money for it, until a mysterious lawyer named Dawson comes up with a bunch of the money even though Claude and Lucy claim to know nothing about this lawyer. Worse is that Kane dips into a greater portion of the company's funds to pay off the rest of the bail than the company normally does, with everybody thinking that Kane is doing it for personal reasons, which would be to try to win Lucy back for himself. Lucy, for her part, is claiming that she only married Claude for his money and that she still really loves Kane. Just how honest is she being?

Farley is more concerned, and rightly so, when word gets out that Brackett has jumped bail, and then it's found out that Brackett has been murdered! Kane is trying to figure out who this mysterious Dawson is and who hired him. He's also trying to solve a murder and figure out why he's being followed. All of this is happening while he's got both the police trying to solve the murder, and a business partner who is none too happy with everything that's going on considering how much of the company's money is involved.

A Dangerous Profession is decidedly B noir, but it's entertaining enough. Everybody puts in a professional job, although the story itself feels like a bit of an overcomplicated mess at times. Even though this one was released by RKO and is therefore part of the old "Turner Library" that has always made up a substantial portion of the TCM schedule, I think it's not without reason that A Dangerous Profession isn't so well known.

The Fool Killer

Back in the spring, TCM ran its second season of Two for One, in which people from the movie industry select a double feature of films they feel are significant to them in some way or another. Both seasons got a rerun in the fall. One of those people was director Joe Dante, whose night is getting a rerun tonight. His first film at 8:00 PM is Night of the Hunter, with the second being a new-to-me film influenced by Night of the Hunter: The Fool Killer, at 10:00 PM.

Edward Albert (Jr.) stars as George Mellish. As the movie opens, were in rural east Tennessee some time not too awfully long after the end of the US Civil War. George lost both of his parents in a way that's not fully made clear and isn't exactly relevant to the plot anyway. Suffice it to say that George is living with foster parents, who treat him badly any time he does anything wrong. Eventually, George has enough of the abuse, so he grabs a go bag and stows away aboard the next train that comes, going west to parts unknown.

Unfortunately, when the train stops to take on water, George hops off, losing his bag when he can't get back on in time. Oops. So George becomes a sort of hobo, until he meets and old guy Jim Jelliman (Henry Hull), nicknamed Dirty Jim because he doesn't keep his house clean. Indeed, Jim calls young George a fool for trying to clean up the place, and then tells George what today we'd call an urban legend, about the so-called "Fool Killer" who stalks the countryside and chops people to death. It's almost enough to get George to run away again.

George continues to go west, with vague thoughts about wanting to become a gold prospector out west and even see the ocean. He meets another drifter, a man who for the longest time won't speak and doesn't seem to want to hear George say anything either. This man eventually reveals that his name is Milo Bogardus (Anthony Perkins). Except that he's not really Milo Bogardus, although we'll call him that because that's the only name the man has now. Apparently Milo fought in the Civil War and suffered some sort of injury that left him with PTSD and amnesia, such that when he was in the hospital recovering nobody knew his name. There was another dying soldier named Milo Bogardus, so they gave our Milo this name once the original Milo died. George seems to look up to Milo, although Milo might not be quite the role model one would like. Milo has no time for the traditional southern Protestantism of the era, so when they happen along a "camp meeting" revival show which George would like to attend, Milo is horrified.

This leads to George and Milo's parting and George's being taken in by a much nicer set of foster parents, the Dodds. But Milo eventually shows up again and is one again disgusted by the change he sees in George, leading to the film's climax.

Joe Dante suggested that The Fool Killer is some sort of tremendously good movie that never got a proper release back in the day which is why it's largely forgotten. (Indeed, the majority of the limited number of IMDb reviews date from the days immediately after the previous TCM showing.) While I'm glad Dante selected this film and gave everybody a chance to see it, I'm sorry to say it's not nearly as good as Dante makes it out to be. It's not bad, but to me it came across as the sort of movie that's trying really hard to be daring when in fact it really isn't. Perkins is given a very unappealing character to play, and I found the revival scene to be particularly badly handled. Still, as I said, I'm glad I got to see this, and will say that anybody else interested should watch and make their own conclusions.

His sister-in-law

Barbara Stanywck was TCM's Star of the Month back in March 2025, which gave me the chance to record a couple of her movies that I hadn't done posts on before. Among those was the melodramatic programmer His Brother's Wife.

Robert Taylor plays the he who has a brother and eventually a sister-in-law. The "he" in question is Chris Claybourne, the latest in a family line of medical researchers who, despite having been trained to do medical research, would rather be a playboy. To be fair to him, the research in question is the tick-borne disease spotted fever, which is affecting mining camps in the jungles of South America; since a lot of the basic research has to be done down there away from civilization, it's understandable why Chris might not want to go down there. This disappoints his dad (Samuel S. Hinds) and older brother Tom (John Eldredge), also medical researchers. Tom has an unseen fiancée Mary.

Chris makes an agreement with his family, which is that before he goes off to South America at the beginning of June to work with Prof. Fahrenheim (Jean Hersholt), he gets to spend the month of May doing what he wants. So he goes to the Crescent Club, a gambling establishment run by a guy called "Fish Eye" (Joseph Calleia). Working at the club as a tout who brings in rich guys to be fleeced by the club in exchange for a commission on how much they're fleeced is Rita Wilson (Barbara Stanwyck, who would go on to marry Robert Taylor after making this movie). Not that Chris knows Rita is workin for Fish Eye, or that she has debts of her own to him that she's basically working off. In any case the two of them fall in love, with Chris deciding to elope with Rita instead of going to South America.

Except that Chris runs up $5,000 in gambling debts that he can't pay off, passing off a bad check since it's generally believed he's going to go down to South America away from American law. Fish Eye is no dummy and calls Chris on his bluff. Dad can't mortgage the clinic again to pay off his son's debt, so Tom makes Chris agree that he (Tom) will pay off the debt in exchange for Chris' going off to South America for that two-year research hitch. If Rita really loves Chris, she'll wait the two years before Chris returns and only marry him then.

Rita is no dummy and understands that Tom is trying to get rid of her because she's déclassé and the Claybournes are high-class. So she goes into debt herself to pay off Chris' debt, not telling either Chris or Tom, and letting Chris go off to South America. She then starts working her wiles on Tom, getting him to dump that unseen fiancée and marrying Rita, who really doesn't love him and is certainly never going to grant him a divorce.

If that's not insane enough, Chris returns from South American before the two years are up and finds out about the marriage. He knows Rita is still at the Crescent Club, and discovers that she still loves him, although now it's Tom who won't grant a divorce. So he takes her to South America on the theory that this will make Tom finally grant that divorce. Meanwhile, the research into the spotted fever isn't going well, to the point that the South American authorities will charge Chris or Fahrenheim with manslaughter if they try out a serum on another local and that local doesn't survive. You can guess where this is leading....

His Brother's Wife is the sort of movie that audiences of the 1930s might have liked, but 90 years on seems dated and with a plot that veers in a direction that feels like a hilarious misfire. Stanwyck does the best she can with the material, as do the rest of the cast. This is one of those movies where the studio (MGM) has the ability to cast a fine stable of stars, even if the material more or less sinks the movie.

The sky of size

Another movie that I had sitting on my DVR until it very nearly expired was The Big Sky. So I made the point of watching it before it did in fact expire so that I could get this post on it written and scheduled for some future time.

The movie opens in Kentucky in the early 1830s, although the movie isn't going to stay there for long. Kirk Douglas stars as Jim Deakins who is transporting a body to Louisville. In the woods along the cart path he hears a bird, and when he goes to investigate he finds it's not a bird but a man good at bird calls, Boone Caudill (Dewey Martin), who for whatever reason first gives the name of his uncle, Zeb Calloway. Boone and Jim get into a fight at first, but become fast friends by the time they get to Louisville.

Boone's intended destination is St. Louis, where he plans to look for Uncle Zeb. Zeb (Arthur Hunnicutt) is a trapper who returns to St. Louis with his wares once a year since that's basically the end of civilization in 1830. Trapping in the upper Missouri River valley and the Rockies is difficult not just because of the mountainous terrain and bad climate, and not just because of the violent Indian tribes who for obvious reasons don't like having the white man impeding on their territory. No; there's also the fur company which lays claim to the fruits of the land, having set up several forts along the Missouri to trade with the Indians. They don't like having anyone else trying to trap or hunt in their perceived territory without them getting a cut, and that is apparently just what Zeb's been doing. Zeb's in jail for stealing whiskey from the fur company, and when Jim and Boone get sent to jail on a drunk and disorderly, they get put in the same holding cell as Zeb.

Zeb's plan is to go west again, up the Missouri on a boat captained by a holdover from the days this area was part of the French Louisiana teritory, Frenchy Jourdonnais (Steven Geray). They can always use extra crew, so Boone and Jim are allowed to hire on. The boat is also taking a Blackfoot woman up the river, Teal Eye (Elizabeth Threatt). She had been kidnapped by the rival Crow tribe but escaped some years back. Zeb, having found her and speaking a Blackfoot language better than anybody else in the crew, knows that returning her to her people is going to go a long way toward getting trading rights for them and not for the Missouri Fur Company.

But the Missouri Fur Company isn't going to go without a fight. They have their forts along the river, and send a man named Streak (Jim Davis) to try to sabotage Frenchy's boat. It leads to a series of adventures as the boat goes up the river and the men have to fight both the Crow and Streak's men along the way. Teal Eye and another Blackfoot named Poordevil know the lay of the land and are able to help. Things get more complicated, however, as Jim and Boone both fall in love with Teal Eye. Will they ever make it Blackfoot territory? Will they be able to make it home?

The story in The Big Sky is one of those rousing adventure yarns that boys of a certain age will probably like. I don't know how much historical accuracy there is in this movie however. Meanwhile, the print TCM ran wasn't very good. In fact, it felt like it came from two different prints, with some sections not being so bad while others looked like they were from a bad 16mm TV print. That might have something to do with the fact that the movie was edited down for original release from 140 minutes to 122. The TCM print was back up to 140 minutes. I don't know if the movie would have been better edited down to 122, but I think it certainly would have been better if it had been written to run only two hours if that. It's also a movie that screams for a Technicolor treatment instead of the black and white we have here.

So The Big Sky isn't exactly bad, but it could have been a lot better.