North to Alaska

So I made it a point to watch North to Alaska off my DVR, since it's going to be on FXM Retro tomorrow morning at 7:35 AM. It's also avaialble on a cheap DVD and Blu-Ray, the latter being under $10 the last time I checked the TCM Shop, so you can still catch it if you don't have FXM Retro. And it's more than worth a watch.

John Wayne plays Sam McCord, who has struck it big in the Alaska gold rush outside Nome circa 1900. Sam is in a mining partnership along with his friend George (Stewart Granger), and George's kid brother Billy (Fabian, obviously there for the teen crowd). Sam is throwing money around like there's no tomorrow, and he's setting off for Seattle to get provisions. Fortuitously, George's fiancée Jenny is in Seattle, so now that George is rich, he's ready to marry Jenny, and Sam could do worse than to pick up Jenny in Seattle for George. Just before leaving for Seattle, Sam meets newcomer Frankie (Ernie Kovacs), who is clearly a con artist trying to bilk people out of their money. This is an obvious bit of foreshadowing.

Anyhow, Sam gets down to Seattle, and looks up Jenny. It turns out she's a servant in a rich family's house. Also, she couldn't be bothered to wait for George, so she went and married the butler. Oops. But Sam is fortunate enough to meet Michelle, nicknamed Angel (played by Capucine), at a burlesque house. They become friends, and through spending time together, Michelle begins to fall in love with Sam and is willing to follow him back to Nome. Of course, Sam thinks she's doing it to pretend to be Jenny so that George will still have a wife.

When we get back to Alaska, there are two main plots. The first is the obvious one of Michelle not being George's fiancée, and Michelle really preferring Sam to George. Never mind the fact that there's also Billy around lusting after Michelle even though he doesn't have anything close to the experience necessary to win the heart of a woman like Michelle. But there's another plot line involving Frankie. Apparently Michelle knew Frankie in the lower 48, and Frankie is trying to jump Sam and George's claim. He finds somebody who spent some time on the land and cons that person into filing a counter-claim, and Sam and George also get the impression that Michelle might be in on it.

It all ends pleasantly enough, however, as this is the sort of movie that you can see a mile away that it's not supposed to be anything serious and heavy.

North to Alaska is yet another of those movies that really has nothing groundbreaking, but works as more than serviceable entertainment. John Wayne was a lot better at comedy than he's often given credit for, in part because he didn't make all that many comedies. I'm not the biggest Stewart Granger fan, but he does nothing to drag the movie down. Ditto Fabian and Capucine, although they're the two who get the movie's one really weak scene, in which Fabian sings a song to her and then gets drunk at dinner. It's the comedic storyline, however, that's the real winner here, and that's what makes the movie entertaining.

North to Alaska probably won't stick in your mind as long as other movies, but what it sets out to do, it does well.