Although the original trailer for the film explains that "Mogambo" means "the Greatest," in fact, the word "Mogambo" has no meaning at all. Producer Sam Zimbalist came up with the title by altering the name of the Mocambo, a famous Hollywood nightclub.
Plot
Ava Gardner in Mogambo
New York socialite Eloise "Honey Bear" Kelly arrives at a remote African outpost, looking for a rich maharaja acquaintance, only to find he has cancelled his trip owing to unrest in his realm.[2] While waiting for the next river boat out, she spars with hardworking big game hunter and wild animal catcher Victor Marswell from the United States, who initially views her as disreputable. Marswell's business partner is plucky Englishman and big game hunter John Brown-Pryce, known as "Brownie." "Brownie" is sympathetic to Kelly, and believes that her "scars aren't visible, but they're there." Marswell also has a semi-hostile relationship with his employee, the gruff Russian Leon Boltchak. Kelly and Marswell later develop a mutual attraction and make love. Then the river boat brings London couple Donald Nordley and his wife Linda. Honey Bear takes the steamer out with the British skipper at Marswell's urging, although she would prefer to stay with Marswell and he expresses some regret at their parting. The Nordleys wish to go on safari to record the cries of gorillas. Marswell declines to guide them there due to the difficulties involved and insists that they be guided on the agreed route by his assistant, despite the Nordleys' protests. Honey Bear rejoins the group after the steamer suffers engine failure and subsequently runs aground.
Clark Gable and Grace Kelly in Mogambo
Marswell rescues Linda from a panther, and Honey Bear sees that they are attracted to one another. After Marswell talks to Linda privately, he agrees to take the Nordleys into gorilla country, while also taking Honey Bear part of the way to join the district commissioner, who can then take her back to civilization. However, they find the commissioner mortally wounded by recently belligerent Samburu tribesmen. With reinforcements days away, the small party narrowly escapes, taking the commissioner with them. Meanwhile, a serious romance is developing between Marswell and Linda. Only Donald is blind to the situation. Marswell plans to tell him about how he and Linda feel, but has second thoughts after realizing how much Donald loves his wife and perhaps how she would be better off remaining with him. The situation is aggravated when Marswell reluctantly shoots a gorilla to save Donald, blowing a chance to capture a baby gorilla. Marswell goes back to camp, depressed, and begins drinking heavily in his tent. Honey Bear joins him.
When Linda appears, she finds them cuddling. Marswell decides he can fix everything by making Linda hate him and makes a show of this cuddling followed by dismissive remarks about Linda's infatuation with "the White Hunter" to enrage her. Unfortunately, his ploy works too well when Linda shoots him with his own pistol, wounding him in the arm. Honey Bear lies to the others, telling them that Marswell had been making advances to Linda for some time, finally forcing Linda to shoot him in his drunken state. The next day, the party breaks camp to head back, leaving Marswell behind to try to capture young gorillas to pay for the safari. Marswell, acknowledging to himself his feelings for Honey Bear, asks her to stay and then proposes to her, but she rebuffs him. As the canoes set off, however, she suddenly jumps into the water and wades her way back to him.
In 1946, the Los Angeles Times reported MGM was considering remaking Red Dust with Marilyn Maxwell as a possible star.[3] In March 1948, Marie McDonald reportedly screen tested for the Jean Harlow part.[4] In May 1949, Maxwell and Gene Kelly were being considered for lead roles.[5]
The studio had a great deal of success with color remakes of older films shot on location overseas, including King Solomon's Mines (1950) and Quo Vadis (1951). In August 1951, MGM announced it would make Mogambo, shot on location in Africa. The producer would be Sam Zimbalist who had made King Solomon's Mines, and the star would be Clark Gable.[6]
In February 1952, Zimbalist scouted locations in Africa for six weeks. In June, John Ford agreed to direct.[7]
Frank Allen and his wife were guides during the six week-safari that constituted location filming.[13]
The shoot was difficult. There was a rumor Clark Gable was going to be assassinated by the Mau Mau, so John Ford moved a location. Two of the crew were revealed to be Mau Mau.[14] The unit was plagued by rain and had a deleterious effect on the already poor quality of the roads. Three of the crew were killed in road accidents, including assistant director John Hancock.[15][16]
"Ten White Hunters were seconded to our unit for our protection and to provide fresh meat. Among them were Viscount Mandeville and Marcus, Lord Wallscourt, a delightful man whom Ford treated abysmally - sometimes very sadistically. In Ford's eyes the poor man could do nothing right and was continually being bawled out in front of the entire unit (in some ways he occasionally took the heat off me). None of us could understand the reason for this appalling treatment, which the dear kind man in no way deserved. He himself was quite at a loss. Several weeks later we discovered the cause from Ford's brother-in-law: before emigrating to America, Ford's grandfather had been a labourer on the estate in Ireland of the then Lord Wallscourt: Ford was now getting his own back at his descendant. Not a charming sight.[17] Before leaving camp on the first morning [of shooting] I had been told to report to the hair-dressing departments tent, where I found the make-up men armed with electric clippers: 'I have to remove the hair from your chest.' 'Whatever for?' I asked, 'Orders.' It transpired that Clark [Gable], whose chest was completely devoid of hair, had always insisted that no other actor should appear on film exposing a hirsute breast. This included any member of the crew not wearing a shirt as well. He considered it a slight on his masculinity.[17] We now had to return to the MGM Studios in London to shoot all the interior scenes. Someone must have pointed out to Ford that he had been thoroughly foul to me during the entire location shoot and when I arrived for my first day's work I found that he had caused a large notice to be painted at the entrance to our sound stage in capital letters reading "BE KIND TO DONALD WEEK". He was as good as his word - for precisely seven days. On the eighth day he ripped the sign down and returned to his normal bullying behaviour."[17]
Post-production
The music featured in the film was performed by local native tribes (except for Gardner accompanied by player piano), unusual for Hollywood, and the film records a traditional Africa and safari style.
Francoist Spanish censors would not allow adultery to be shown onscreen. For this reason, they changed the relationship of the characters of Linda Nordley (Kelly) and Donald Nordley (Sinden) from wife and husband to sister and brother in the dubbed version released in Spain, thus necessitating the removal of a bedroom scene in which only one bed is present.
Reception
The film was a hit— according to MGM records it made $4,576,000 in the US and Canada and $3,692,000 elsewhere, resulting in a profit of $2,026,000.[1]
In his October 2, 1953 review for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther observes that the film “has a great deal more to do with the low-down romantic maneuvering of two colorful and popular stars than with the thrills of adventuring in Africa, …Some handsome color shots of open country are slipped in from time to time, ... But the interest is basically centered in the civilized stalking of the stars. And it is meant as no insult to Mr. Gable to say that he is the most important gorilla bagged. In the advancement of the romance, which itself is hot stuff, for what it is, several capable actors do entertaining jobs. Mr. Gable is beautifully commanding, in his vicious, sardonic way, and Miss Gardner, as we say, is as enticing as any calculated vampire can be. …Grace Kelly as the stuffy English dame, Donald Sinden as her pip-pip hubby and Eric Pohlmann as a hand are all right, too. The trouble is simply that more of them meant less of the animals.”[18]
James Bacon, writing a capsule review for the AP'sBob Thomas' Hollywood on September 16, 1953, had a similar reaction: “It seems everybody both here and around the country has been hoping Clark Gable would get a good picture. King Gable actually hasn't had one good movie since his return from World War II service. He's got it now in "Mogambo," even though it's a remake of "Red Dust" one of his greatest hits of the '30s. Gable is virile as ever and makes lusty love to Ava Gardner as well as he did to Jean Harlow when he was a much younger man.”[19]
1 2 3 The Eddie Mannix Ledger, Los Angeles, California: Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study.
↑ The John Ford Movie Mystery - 1976 - pg. 154-155
↑ Edwin Schallert (4 November 1946). "'Red Dust' Repeat May Star Marilyn Maxwell". Los Angeles Times.
↑ "Hedda Hopper--Looking at Hollywood". Los Angeles Times. 30 March 1948.
↑ Edwin Schallert (27 May 1949). "Bickford Named Costar With 20th Luminaries; Maxwell Deal Hinted". Los Angeles Times.
↑ "MGM Schedules 40 Pictures For Year". Los Angeles Times. 16 August 1951.
↑ Thomas M. Pryor (12 June 1952). "Ford Will Direct Gable in 'Mogambo': Metro's Romantic Adventure to Be Filmed in Africa --Zimbalist Is Producer". New York Times.
↑ Hedda Hopper (1 May 1952). "Looking at Hollywood: Comedy Role Lures Mitchum from Vacation". Chicago Daily Tribune.
↑ "Albert Lewin to Film 'Saadia' in Morocco". Los Angeles Times. 10 May 1952.
↑ "Drama: Cary Grant Will Do Next Film in France". Los Angeles Times. 25 September 1953.
↑ "Clark Gable Given Guard in Africa". Los Angeles Times. 2 November 1952.
↑ Morgan Hudgins (4 January 1953). "Bivouac on the Trail of 'Mogambo' in Africa". New York Times.
↑ Don Messenger (21 September 1953). "'Safari' Makes Trek To Franklin Park Zoo: Off the Beaten Path". The Christian Science Monitor.
↑ "Ava Gardner III With Dysentery". New York Times. 25 November 1952.
↑ Bob Thomas (3 April 1953). "Actors Find Roads Chief Peril in Africa". The Washington Post.
↑ "Clark Gable's Film Aide Dies in Africa Crash". Los Angeles Times. 19 January 1953.
William Clark Gable was an American film actor. Often referred to as the "King of Hollywood", he had roles in more than 60 films in a variety of genres during a career that lasted 37 years, three decades of which was as a leading man. He was named the seventh greatest male movie star of classic American cinema by the American Film Institute.
Ava Lavinia Gardner was an American actress. She first signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew critics' attention in 1946 with her performance in Robert Siodmak's film noir The Killers. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in John Ford's Mogambo (1953), and for best actress for both a Golden Globe Award and BAFTA Award for her performance in John Huston's The Night of the Iguana (1964). She was a part of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
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John Lee Mahin was an American screenwriter and producer of films who was active in Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1960s. He was known as the favorite writer of Clark Gable and Victor Fleming. In the words of one profile, he had "a flair for rousing adventure material, and at the same time he wrote some of the raciest and most sophisticated sexual comedies of that period."
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Charles Schnee was an American screenwriter and film producer. He wrote the scripts for the Westerns Red River (1948) and The Furies (1950), the social melodrama They Live by Night (1949), and the cynical Hollywood saga The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), for which he won an Academy Award.
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Clark Gable (1901–1960) was an American actor and producer who appeared in over 70 feature films and several short films. Gable first began acting in stage productions, before his film debut in 1924. After many minor roles, Gable landed a leading role in 1931, subsequently becoming one of the most dominant leading men in Hollywood. He often acted alongside re-occurring leading ladies: six films with Jean Harlow, seven with Myrna Loy, and eight with Joan Crawford, among many others.
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Frank Maurice Allen known as "Bunny Allen" was a renowned white hunter and safari guide in Kenya.
Donald Ker was a famous Kenyan white hunter, safari guide and conservationist of British descent. As a young man he teamed up with Sydney Downey to create Ker and Downey Safaris Ltd., one of the first guide companies to transition from hunting to photographic safaris. He is also known for leading two long expeditions with Edgar Monsanto Queeny for the American Museum of Natural History which resulted in the production of several nature documentaries and in Ker's own dedication to conservation.
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