Plot
Beaten and expelled by African villagers for trying to cheat them, the unconscious Joe Moses drifts down a river, where he is discovered by the natives of another village. This tribe is being pressured to move by the District Officer (Ian Bannen), as their land will be flooded by the release of waters from a dam; but they refuse to leave their homes. Deeply Christian, the villagers compare Joe Moses to the real Moses due to his discovery in the reeds as was the baby Moses. With a broken leg and no money, Joe Moses is trapped in the village.
Nursed to health by missionary Rev. Anderson (Alexander Knox) and his daughter Julie (Carrol Baker), Moses impresses the natives with his medicine show. He further astounds the locals when he discovers Emily, that he recognizes as an Indian elephant, in the village. Moses gets her to respond to commands in Hindustani, a language he acquired through his army service in the China Burma India theatre.
The Chief (Orlando Martins) agrees to allow his people to move, but only if they are led by Moses. Reverend Anderson and Julie blackmail Moses through their knowledge of his diamond smuggling in order to lead the people to the "Promised Land". Seeing through Moses's confidence tricks is an educated African, Ubi (Raymond St. Jacques). Ubi initially wishes to team up with Moses to con other Africans, but then attempts to steal Moses's show with a concealed flame thrower that has unexpectedly disastrous consequences for Ubi.
Leading the villagers from atop his elephant, Moses takes them on a journey that has many parallels with the biblical trek, including a bit where he has to part the waters by entering the dam.
Robert Charles Durman Mitchum was an American actor. He rose to prominence with an Academy Award nomination for the Best Supporting Actor for The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), followed by his starring in several classic film noirs. His acting is generally considered a forerunner of the antiheroes prevalent in film during the 1950s and 1960s. His best-known films include Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), Out of the Past (1947), River of No Return (1954), The Night of the Hunter (1955), Thunder Road (1958), Cape Fear (1962), El Dorado (1966), Ryan's Daughter (1970) and The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973). He is also known for his television role as U.S. Navy Captain Victor "Pug" Henry in the epic miniseries The Winds of War (1983) and sequel War and Remembrance (1988).
Alexander Knox was a Canadian actor on stage, screen, and occasionally television. He was nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe for his performance as Woodrow Wilson in the film Wilson (1944).
Carroll Baker is an American actress. After studying under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, Baker began performing on Broadway in 1954. From there, she was recruited by director Elia Kazan to play the lead in the adaptation of two Tennessee Williams plays into the film Baby Doll in 1956. Her role in the film as a coquettish but sexually naïve Southern bride earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Ryan's Daughter is a 1970 British epic romantic drama film directed by David Lean and starring Robert Mitchum and Sarah Miles. The film, set between August 1917 and January 1918, tells the story of a married Irish woman who has an affair with a British officer during World War I, despite moral and political opposition from her nationalist neighbours. The supporting cast features John Mills, Christopher Jones, Trevor Howard and Leo McKern. The film is a re-telling of the plot of Gustave Flaubert's 1857 novel Madame Bovary.
Ian Edmund Bannen was a Scottish actor with a long career in film, on stage, and on television. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), the first Scottish actor to receive the honour, as well as two BAFTA Film Awards for his performances in Sidney Lumet's The Offence (1973) and John Boorman's Hope and Glory (1987).
5 Card Stud is a 1968 American Western mystery film directed by Henry Hathaway and starring Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum. The script is based on a novel by Ray Gaulden and was written by Marguerite Roberts, who also wrote the screenplay of True Grit for Hathaway the following year.
Peter James Yates was an English film director and producer.
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Penelope is a 1966 comedy and caper film directed by Arthur Hiller, and starring Natalie Wood, Ian Bannen, Peter Falk, Jonathan Winters, and Dick Shawn. George Wells' screenplay was based on the 1965 novel of the same title, written by Howard Melvin Fast under the pseudonym E.V. Cunningham.
The Devil at 4 O'Clock is a 1961 American adventure film directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Spencer Tracy and Frank Sinatra. Based on a 1958 novel with the same title by British writer Max Catto, the film was a precursor to Krakatoa, East of Java and the disaster films of the 1970s such as The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake and The Towering Inferno.
Up to His Ears is a 1965 French adventure comedy film starring Jean Paul Belmondo and Ursula Andress. It was directed by Philippe de Broca and written by Daniel Boulanger, loosely based on the 1879 novel Tribulations of a Chinaman in China by Jules Verne.
Sylvia is a 1965 American drama film directed by Gordon Douglas, written by Sydney Boehm, and starring George Maharis, Carroll Baker, and Peter Lawford. The film is based on the novel of the same name by E. V. Cunningham in 1960.
Ray Danton was a radio, film, stage, and television actor, director, and producer whose most famous roles were in the screen biographies The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960) and The George Raft Story (1962). He was married to actress Julie Adams from 1954 to 1981.
John Mitchum was an American actor from the 1940s to the 1970s in film and television. The younger brother of the actor Robert Mitchum, he was credited as Jack Mitchum early in his career.
Maxwell Jeffrey Catto was born Mark Finkell in Manchester, England and was an English playwright and novelist.
A Twist of Sand is a 1968 British adventure film directed by Don Chaffey and starring Richard Johnson, Jeremy Kemp, Honor Blackman and Peter Vaughan based on the novel by Geoffrey Jenkins.
Escape from Zahrain is a 1962 American Panavision and Technicolor action film directed by Ronald Neame and starring Yul Brynner, Sal Mineo, Jack Warden, Madlyn Rhue and Anthony Caruso. The film is based on the novel Appointment in Zahrain by Michael Barrett (1960).
Joe Palooka in the Knockout is a 1947 American comedy film directed by Reginald Le Borg. It was the third part of the Joe Palooka series from Monogram Pictures starring Joe Kirkwood, Jr. as the boxer and Leon Errol as his manager. The film also featured Elyse Knox, Marc Lawrence and Trudy Marshall
Robert Mitchum (1917–1997) was an American actor who appeared in over 110 films and television series over the course of his career. He is ranked 23rd on the American Film Institute's list of the 50 greatest American screen legends of all time. His first credited named role was as Quinn in the 1943 western Border Patrol. That same year he appeared in the films Follow the Band, Beyond the Last Frontier, Cry 'Havoc' and Gung Ho! as well as several Hopalong Cassidy films including Colt Comrades, Bar 20, False Colors, and Riders of the Deadline. In 1944, he starred in the western Nevada as Jim "Nevada" Lacy, and a year later in the film West of the Pecos as Pecos Smith. During the 1940s, he was also cast in the film noirs Undercurrent (1946), Crossfire (1947), Out of the Past (1947) and The Big Steal (1949). Mitchum was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a world-weary soldier in the 1945 film The Story of G.I. Joe, which received critical acclaim and was a commercial success.
Carroll Baker is an American actress of film, stage, and television. Spanning a career of fifty years, Baker appeared in 66 feature and television films, as well as 16 television appearances and over 15 stage credits, including 3 Broadway productions. Her most prolific role was in Elia Kazan's 1956 film Baby Doll, which earned her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Throughout her career, she became an established movie sex symbol.
