Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion | |
---|---|
Also known as | "Foreign Legionnaire" |
Genre | Adventure |
Directed by | Lester Fuller |
Starring | Buster Crabbe Fuzzy Knight Cullen Crabbe |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of seasons | 2 |
No. of episodes | 65 |
Production | |
Production locations | Agadir, Morocco |
Running time | 30 minutes |
Original release | |
Network | NBC |
Release | 13 February 1955 – 7 December 1957 |
Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion is an American half-hour black-and-white television series about the French Foreign Legion starring Buster Crabbe in the title role. Crabbe's real-life son Cullen Crabbe played the Legion mascot, with cowboy sidekick Fuzzy Knight playing himself as Legion comedy relief. [1] The series premiered on NBC on 13 February 1955 and ended its first run with the 65th episode shown on 7 December 1957.[ citation needed ] It was shown for many years in syndication on American television under the title Foreign Legionnaire. [2]
The first season of the television show was filmed on location in North Africa with many actual Legionnaires and their installations featuring in the show. [3] With increased danger to the crew, the series moved to Italy. The studio was one owned by Sophia Loren and was just outside the gates of the US Army base, Camp Darby, near Pisa.[ citation needed ]
One of the producers of the show was Harry Saltzman.[ citation needed ] The executive producer was Gilbert A. Ralston. Directors were Marcel Crevenne, Sam Newfield, Pierre Schwab, and Jean Yarbrough. Writers were Jack Andrews, Gene Levitt, and William N. Robson. [3]
Three episodes were spliced together as a film released in the United Kingdom called Desert Outpost (1954) directed by Sam Newfield. [4]
Leif Erickson was an American stage, film, and television actor.
Clarence Linden "Buster" Crabbe II was an American two-time Olympic swimmer and film and television actor. He won the 1932 Olympic gold medal for 400-meter freestyle swimming event, which launched his career on the silver screen and later television. He starred in a variety of popular feature films and movie serials released between 1933 and the 1950s, portraying the top three syndicated comic-strip heroes of the 1930s: Tarzan, Flash Gordon, and Buck Rogers.
Richard Allen Boone was an American actor who starred in over 50 films and was notable for his roles in Westerns, including his starring role in the television series Have Gun – Will Travel.
Beau Geste is an adventure novel by British writer P. C. Wren, which details the adventures of three English brothers who enlist separately in the French Foreign Legion following the theft of a valuable jewel from the country house of a relative. Published in 1924, the novel is set in the period before World War I. It has been adapted for the screen several times.
Theodore Childress "Chill" Wills was an American actor and a singer in the Avalon Boys quartet.
Producers Releasing Corporation was one of the smallest and least prestigious Hollywood film studios of the 1940s. It was considered a prime example of what was called "Poverty Row": a low-rent stretch of Gower Street in Hollywood where shoestring film producers based their operations. However, PRC was more substantial than the usual independent companies that made only a few low-budget movies and then disappeared. PRC was an actual Hollywood studio – albeit the smallest – with its own production facilities and distribution network, and it even accepted imports from the UK. PRC lasted from 1939 to 1947, churning out low-budget B movies for the lower half of a double bill or the upper half of a neighborhood theater showing second-run films. The studio was originally located at 1440 N. Gower St. from 1936 to 1943. PRC then occupied the former Grand National Pictures physical plant at 7324 Santa Monica Blvd., from 1943 to 1946. This address is now an apartment complex.
Joseph Pevney was an American film and television director.
Legionnaire is a 1998 American drama war film directed by Peter MacDonald and starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as a 1920s boxer who wins a fight after having been hired by gangsters to lose it, then flees to join the French Foreign Legion. The cast includes Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Daniel Caltagirone, Nicholas Farrell and Steven Berkoff. The film was filmed in Tangier and Ouarzazate, Morocco.
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John Forrest "Fuzzy" Knight was an American film and television actor. He was also a singer, especially in his early career. He appeared in more than 180 films between 1928 and 1967, usually as a cowboy hero's comic sidekick.
Rick Vallin was an actor who appeared in more than 150 films between 1938 and 1966.
Peter Whitney was an American actor in film and television. Tall and heavyset, he played brutish villains in many Hollywood films in the 1940s and 1950s.
Outpost in Morocco is a 1949 American action adventure film directed by Robert Florey, starring George Raft and Marie Windsor. Paul Gerard (Raft), a Moroccan Spahi officer and his French Foreign Legion garrison, holds off attacks from the native tribes of the Emir of Bel-Rashad, the father of Cara (Windsor), the woman he loves. As a rarity amongst American films of the Foreign Legion genre, the Legion cooperated with the producers. A second unit led by Robert Rossen filmed scenes in Morocco. Some of the large-scale action scenes of the film were reused in Fort Algiers and Legion of the Doomed.
The Kid Rides Again is a 1943 American western directed by Sam Newfield. The film was one of the Billy the Kid (film series by Producers Releasing Corporation. It was Iris Meredith's last credited feature film role.
Fugitive of the Plains is a 1943 American Producers Releasing Corporation Western film of the "Billy the Kid" series directed by Sam Newfield. In April 1947 PRC re-released the film as a "streamlined" (edited) "Bronco Buckaroo" version re titled Raiders of Red Rock.
The Billy the Kid series of 42 Western films was produced between 1940 and 1946, and released by Poverty Row studio Producers Releasing Corporation.
Budd Leland Buster, usually credited as Budd Buster, was an American actor known for B western films. He sometimes was credited as George Selk in his later work.
Desert Sands is a 1955 American adventure film directed by Lesley Selander and written by Danny Arnold, George W. George and George F. Slavin. The film stars Ralph Meeker, Marla English, J. Carrol Naish, John Carradine, Ron Randell, John Smith and Keith Larsen.
Ghost of Hidden Valley is a 1946 American Western film directed by Sam Newfield and written by Ellen Coyle. The film stars Buster Crabbe, Al St. John, Jean Carlin, John Meredith, Charles King and Jimmy Aubrey. The film was released on June 5, 1946, by Producers Releasing Corporation.