I must have been eight years-old when first I saw William Wellman's Production of BEAU GESTE. I have never forgotten it. Charmingly quaint as parts of it look today, I still love this French Foreign Legion adventure, and look back fondly at the little boy I was, who dug in the backyard for weeks, two years in a row, to create a lake where he might stage . . . A Viking's Funeral!
My Father urged me to read Percival Christopher Wren's adventure novel Beau Geste, about young Englishmen in The French Foreign Legion, the most successful of a series, but I was slow to read. When I did, I wolfed Beau Geste, Beau Sabreur, and the others. My Father and Mother told me of the wonderful 1925 Silent Version with Ronald Coleman as Beau. However, in ten years, silent films had disappeared as swiftly as Laserdiscs have vanished today. I have never seen the silent, but Wellman's version of BEAU GESTE is a scene for scene remake of the 1925.
BEAU GESTE begins with a framed scene of a mounted column approaching Fort Zinderneuf in the desert of French Morocco. No one answers Colonel de Beaujolais's signal. Someone fires shots at his feet. When he points out that the troopers at their posts on the wall of the Fort are dead, the Company Bugler volunteers to scale the wall and investigate. Time passes, and Colonel Beaujolais (James Stephenson) follows the Bugler up the rope. He finds no one alive inside, and the Acting Commander of the Garrison, Sergeant Markoff, lies dead, bayoneted, with a note in his hand. The Colonel has just opened the gates to his men, when they come under fire from marauding Arabs. From the safety of the nearby Oasis, the Company sees Fort Zinderneuf burst into flames.
And so, in the first five minutes, we have seen a mysterious fort manned by dead men, been shot at, witnessed the disappearance of the Company Bugler, and experienced an inexplicable explosive fire in the Fort.
Then in a Wellsian flashback, Sailing Ships of the Line trade volleys of six pounder shot on a placid sea. The camera pulls back back, and we see four boys and a little girl sailing elaborate model ships, while a fifth boy observes with a sneering air. They are the four wards of Lady Patricia Brandon (Heather Thatcher, a Maggie lookalike), plus the insufferable legal heir to the Brandon Estate.
We become part of the children's fantasy, as young Beau Geste (that's 14 year-old Donald O'Connor) removes a bit of shot that has wounded younger brother Digby Geste. To memorialize the occasion, they give a toy soldier a Viking Funeral on a burning model ship, with a toy pig or dog at his feet. In their subsequent play, Lady Pat shows them the Family nest egg, a fabulous sapphire, "The Blue Water." (So that's where it came from!)
Years later, the Geste boys, Beau (Gary Cooper), John (Ray Milland), Digby (Robert Preston), and a beautiful, young Susan Hayward (in her first important role) are present when the gem utterly disappears. One by one, the young men go off to join the French Foreign Legion to protect each other from arrest and disgrace.
By the time young Digby catches up with the other two in Africa, all are in the grip of Sergeant Markoff (Brian Donlevy, who won an Academy Award). Markoff is so harsh, that a fellow Russian (J. Carol Nash) tells the lads, Markoff was "discharged from The Siberian Penal Service" for being too cruel.
After basic training, Digby is separated from his brothers, and becomes the bugler at the Main Post. Beau and John, now under suspicion that they are hiding an important, valuable sapphire, undergo great cruelty along with the other men (Albert Dekker, Harold Huber, a boyish Broderick Crawford, etc), as they move to Fort Zinderneuf. It gets worse when the Commanding Officer dies of Plague, and Sergeant Markoff takes full command.
How the degraded men stand off attack after attack by Arabs, how the Gestes get their Viking Funeral, and how the mystery is solved makes a Grand Adventure for boys (and girls ) of all ages.
I suppose colorization would not be too much of a crime here, and some people opt for the the 1966 Techniscope remake directed by Douglas Heyes, starring Guy Stockwell as Beau, with a good performance by Telly Savalas as Sergeant Markoff.
An objection may be that it is violent, even a bit sadistic in parts, and, of course, the Arabs are purely the faceless bad guys who get shot off their horses. Then, too, all the good guys appear to be white men (with the possible exception of Harold Huber). My guess is that The French Foreign Legion, then and now, draws a fair number of men of mixed race.
In any case, the examples above are innocent compared to the brutality, violence, and racism (of various kinds) that many movies are shot through with today.
Finally, there is the infectious musical score by Alfred Newman. For several years after I saw BEAU GESTE, I delivered The Free Press far out West Main Street, beyond where the big snow ploughs went. Many a night, wading through drifts taller than myself, I imagined myself crossing the Moroccan Desert, humming . . . "Dee-DEE-dee-ta-dee-ta-dee-e-e, Da- DEE-ta-Dee-ta-Dee-TA-dee-tee-tee-ta-tee . . . . "
(You may still join The French Foreign Legion through "http://www.specialoperations.com," don't delay. Tell 'em Beau Geste sent you.)
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