Wed 24 Feb 2010
A Movie Review by David L. Vineyard: EAST OF SUMATRA (1954).
Posted by Steve under Action Adventure movies , Reviews[10] Comments
EAST OF SUMATRA. Universal, 1954. Jeff Chandler, Marilyn Maxwell, Anthony Quinn, Suzan Ball, John Sutton, J.C. Flippen, Peter Graves, Scat Man Crothers, James Craven. Screenplay: Frank Gill Jr., based on a story co-authored by Louis L’Amour. Director: Budd Boetticher.
Here’s a well done pulp-style jungle adventure from action director Budd Boetticher and based on a story by western writer king Louis L’Amour.
Jeff Chandler is a two-fisted mining engineer whose team is sent to the Maylayan jungle to find tin and runs afoul of local royal Quinn who is jealous of his half caste fiance’s (Ball) interest in Jeff. An added complication is Chandler’s officious boss John Sutton, who is engaged to marry Marilyn Maxwell, Jeff’s ex girl.
Things go wrong, and soon Chandler and team are held virtual prisoner by Quinn and his men,and their only means of escape is by hand-to-hand combat to the death in a native temple between Chandler and Quinn.
Attractively filmed by Boetticher, East of Sumatra is a mix of adventure pulp and Men’s Sweat Mag brought to life (“I Fought a Sumatran King for His Woman and a Fortune in Tin”).
The characters are familiar stereotypes — Chandler the two-fisted boss; Flippen the older veteran straw boss; Graves a Texan engineer in ten gallon hat; Crothers the singing camp cook; Quinn the proud jealous native king; Sutton the boss that doesn’t understand the real world of the field men; Maxwell the bad girl trying to forget her past and rough tough Chandler; Suzan Ball a sultry half white princess torn between jungle king Quinn and handsome westerner Chandler…
Technicolor, well done jungle sets, some nice matte paintings, a good if predictable script, and a competent cast of veterans show how well this sort of thing could be done in the right hands.
Nothing great, but a showcase of old fashioned studio competence done neatly and with a bit of flare, and the battle between Chandler and Quinn is well matched and handled in a circle of torchlight.
These kinds of films used to be a staple in theaters. Minor A films churned out by competent directors and featuring attractive casts who hit their marks and generally were better than the material.
It’s the sort of thing Hollywood relegated to television eventually but is seldom done as well today, and if it isn’t art, it is at least entertainment and done with some style.
Editorial Comments: That’s Suzan Ball in the dancing girl costume in the photo just above. She was a second cousin of Lucille Ball who had the sad misfortune of dying young, at the age of 21, a victim of cancer. Married to actor Richard Long when she died, she appeared in only eight films and one episode of Lux Video Theater before her death.
On another matter, both David and I have been trying to learn whether the story this movie was based ever appeared in printed form, with no definitive answer so far. We presume the answer is no, but does anyone know for sure?
February 25th, 2010 at 11:47 am
I haven’t seen this film that I recall but it is interesting to note that even after winning an Oscar for VIVA ZAPATA, Anthony Quinn was still being relegated to, basically, the same kind of roles he had before. It took a second Oscar for LUST FOR LIFE to get him major and starring roles in important films.
February 25th, 2010 at 3:51 pm
Well I kind of liked Quinn better when he was a strong supporting actor — like Lee Marvin or Walter Matthau were back then, who could liven up a movie from the sidelines. I rooted for all these guys back in the 50s/early 60s but when they became stars they mostly got self-indulgent and disappointing.
February 25th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
This isn’t all that far from roles Quinn played in the first of the Hope and Crosby Road pictures or in Abbot and Costello’s LOST IN A HAREM. And even as late as GUNS OF NAVARONE Quinn was still playing second lead. I really don’t think the turning point was LUST FOR LIFE as much as it was ZORBA THE GREEK. After that one they had to take him seriously as an lead.
But I’ll agree in general Quinn, Marvin, and even Matthau were at their best in strong supporting roles.
February 26th, 2010 at 3:21 am
I am sure the story this is based on was published, in one of Louis L’Amour’s story collections.
February 26th, 2010 at 7:56 am
I like pulp adventure jungle movies so I managed to track down a bootleg dvd and ordered a copy.
Speaking of Anthony Quinn, last night I watch a bootleg of a 1956 movie, THE WILD PARTY. Quinn had the starring role playing a beatnik brute who terrorizes two squares, Carol Ohmart and Arthur Franz. I laughed all through it but unfortunately it wasn’t supposed to be funny. Some nice jazz scenes however. I’m afraid beatnik movies don’t hold up very well and often are very dated. The slang dialog is enough to make you cringe.
February 26th, 2010 at 10:54 am
David (not Vineyard)
I’ve had that feeling all along myself. I’d even go so far as to say that I’ve read the collection with the story in it, but … I can’t locate my copy of the book, nor has anything shown up on the Internet that agrees with what we’re both so sure of.
So it’s still a mystery.
Walker
You’re right. Nothing in the world of film has dated more than “beatnik” movies. It’s probably because Hollywood got them so wrong in the first place … or was it that the beatniks were so easily parodied that the movement disappeared on its own, unable to escape the images in the mind of the general public of hippie clothes, silly slang jargon and other shallow nonsense?
February 26th, 2010 at 11:32 am
True Quinn was playing a second lead in GUNS OF NAVARONE But that was a major film and EAST OF SUMATRA wasn’t.
February 26th, 2010 at 11:28 pm
I checked the official L’Amour site, but all it says is this was based on a story by L’Amour. There is a listing under his collected adventure stories of all the titles of the stories, but none of them are listed as “East of Sumatra.”
But he certainly did write this sort of thing. The only thing that makes me think this is an original screen story is that it is listed as co-authored by Jack Natteford, who mostly wrote B westerns dating back to 1921 and including films for Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. Still, it is possible that one of L’Amour’s shorts was adapted by Natteford into a screen story. I’m not sure even the Screenwriter’s Guild understands how story credits are assigned on films.
Some of L’Amour’s adventure stories were collected in YONDERING and others in THE COLLECTED SHORT STORIES vol IV, Adventure stories. I think there is at least one (maybe two) other paperback collection of his adventure fiction, but wading through his bibliography is no small task.
There are at least three THE WILD PARTY films, but only the 1975 James Ivory film with James Coco and Raquel Welch is even vaguely based on the Joseph Moncure narrative poem, and that one throws in James Coco as an actor based on Fatty Arbuckle and Welch as his ‘victim’.
Maltin gives the Quinn version all of one and a half stars and notes it co stars Jay Robinson (THE ROBE) and Kathryn Grant (Crosby) with Arthur Franz. With Quinn and Robinson, the potential for overacting is significant.
The only thing funnier than beatnik films are hippie films. Maybe its because they were usually written by middle aged guys who got most of their background second hand. Or maybe preserving fads and slang isn’t what Hollywood does best. There’s one simply awful one with Peter Falk as a sociopathic beatnik that frequently shows up in those collections of 50 films for $20.
August 22nd, 2010 at 1:10 pm
As long as I’m poking around this site I might as well weigh in on this movie too.
I believe East of Sumatra was an original idea of LL’s that he and Jack Natteford wrote up a proposal on together. They worked on two later films both of which were done in this way … LL wrote, or had written, the original story and Natteford did the screenplay and helped sell the film version.
Louis often sold ideas that were made into films and then he went on to “novelize” his own film. Hondo was one of these as was Kid Rodelo (the movie version of which was done by Natteford from Louis’s long unpublished story Desperate Men).
Louis’s original story has never been published as it was just a film treatment. It will someday appear at http://www.louislamourslosttreasures.com/
All other L’Amour short stories in the Adventure genre can be found in the one collection mentioned above, The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour Volume Four … there is no need to purchase any of the other books. Additional information on the stories in this volume can be found at http://www.louislamourgreatadventure.com/
August 22nd, 2010 at 2:03 pm
Beau: You’ve answered a lot of questions we had — and some we hadn’t even asked. Thanks for stopping by!
— Steve