I think I mentioned at the end of September that one of the movies that was returning to the FXM rotation is the 1935 version of the Jack London story The Call of the Wild. I recorded one of the airing since I apparently hadn't blogged about it before, and watched it when I noticed that it's on the schedule again tomorrow (October 30) at 6:00 AM.
Clark Gable plays Jack Thornton, who shows up in Skagway, Alaska, in 1900, since there's that gold rush going on in the Klondike. Except that he's on his way back to civilization, having earned his fortune panning for gold. Unfortunately, he's stupid enough to gamble those winnings and loses them. But his friend Shorty (Jack Oakie) is also in town, and knows of a map that will lead to a mining location that is sure to produce gold.
There's just one catch: Shorty came across that map by illicit means, from a prospector who died but sent the map to his son, one Mr. Blake. Shorty didn't get to hold on to the map, and the two men are going to make it to the secret location by Shorty's imperfect memory. Oh, and they need provisions. Having gotten the dog Buck who is the focus of the Jack London story, Jack and Shorty set off.
One night they hear wolves, and the next morning they find that the wolves were stalking a nice young lady who's alone out in the woods, Claire Blake (Loretta Young). Of course, she didn't get there by herself; her husband was the Mr. Blake to whom the old prospector sent the map. He had to leave Claire in camp to forage for food and never returned, and is presumed dead. Jack and Shorty intend to leave Claire in Dawson, the next big town they're going to get to, but they discover that she knows the parts of the map that Shorty has gotten wrong. So she's in on the scheme.
Unsurprisingly, Jack and Claire are going to fall in love along the way, as they're the two leads and this was the movie on which Clark Gable knocked up Loretta Young, leading her to step away from the public for several months and claiming she just "adopted" a daughter, which everybody knew was nonsense because of the daughter's Clark Gable-like jug ears. But none of that was the focus of the movie.
It's not going to be a bed of roses for Jack and Claire, however. Mr. Smith (Reginald Owen), whom Jack had already met and who is known by Jack to be a nasty guy, has found that Mr. Blake is not in fact dead and gets Blake to lead him to the mining site, strangling Mr. Blake just before getting there. Smith then holds up Jack and Claire so that they won't be able to file an official claim on the property. The other complication is that Blake cheats death for a second time, being discovered later by Jack not realizing that this is Claire's husband.
If the movie had been called anything other than Call of the Wild, it would be a competent if unspectacular programmer, notable mostly for the Gable/Young relationship. That, and the fact that there was some location shooting done in Washington state, at a time when the studios weren't venturing that far out of California. The third mildly notable thing is that this was one of the final movies released by Twentieth Century pictures before the merger with Fox. The print FXM ran has the "Fox" fanfare with the 20th Century-Fox logo at the beginning, although the title card has the 20th Century Pictures logo. That all is explained by the end credits, which tell audiences to buy their war bonds at this theater today. So the print FXM is running is obviously a re-release print from World War II. IMDb says the movie was re-released in 1945.
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