Robin Hood of El Dorado | |
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Directed by | William A. Wellman |
Written by | Walter Noble Burns |
Screenplay by | William A. Wellman Joseph Calleia Melvin Levy |
Based on | The Robin Hood of El Dorado: The Saga of Joaquin Murrieta, Famous Outlaw of California's Age of Gold (1932), by Walter Noble Burns |
Produced by | John W. Considine Jr. |
Starring | Warner Baxter Ann Loring Bruce Cabot |
Cinematography | Chester A. Lyons |
Edited by | Robert Kern |
Music by | Herbert Stothart |
Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release date |
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Running time | 85 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Robin Hood of El Dorado is a 1936 American Western film directed by William A. Wellman for MGM. It stars Warner Baxter as real-life Mexican folk hero, Joaquin Murrieta, and Ann Loring as his love interest, with Bruce Cabot as Bill Warren and J. Carrol Naish as Murrietta's notorious partner, Three-Fingered Jack. The film is based on the life of Murrietta as the Robin Hood of Old California in 1850, a kind, gentle man who is driven to violence.
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In 1848 in California, Mexican farmer Joaquin Murietta has become a criminal to avenge the rape and murder of his wife, Rosita, and lynching of his brother, Jose, at the hands of the Americans.
The screenplay was written by the actor Joseph Calleia, Melvin Levy and William A. Wellman, with assistance by Robert Carson. In 1937, Wellman and Carson won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay for A Star Is Born . The Robin Hood of El Dorado was based on the biography of Joaquin Murrieta by Walter Noble Burns and was MGM's attempt to follow Viva Villa! .[ citation needed ]
Film historian Frank T. Thompson writes that "Wellman made a stronger statement on the subject of racism than a whole spate of later films (like Gentleman's Agreement )." [1]
The Robin Hood of El Dorado also anticipates the revisionist westerns of the 1960s, especially The Wild Bunch (1969), directed by Sam Peckinpah. Both films mix violence and sentimentality with an undercurrent of regret for a vanishing way of life. The Mexican folk song "La golondrina " is used to similar effect.[ citation needed ]
Art director David Townsend was killed in a car accident while scouting locations for the film. [2]
Viva Villa! is a 1934 American pre-Code film directed by Jack Conway and starring Wallace Beery as Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. The screenplay was written by Ben Hecht, adapted from the 1933 book Viva Villa! by Edgecumb Pinchon and O. B. Stade. The film was shot on location in Mexico and produced by David O. Selznick. There was uncredited assistance with the script by Howard Hawks, James Kevin McGuinness, and Howard Emmett Rogers. Hawks and William A. Wellman were also uncredited directors on the film.
Warner Leroy Baxter was an American film actor from the 1910s to the 1940s. Baxter is known for his role as the Cisco Kid in the 1928 film In Old Arizona, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 2nd Academy Awards. He frequently played womanizing, charismatic Latin bandit types in Westerns, and played the Cisco Kid or a similar character throughout the 1930s, but had a range of other roles throughout his career.
Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American film and stage actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill (1930) opposite Marie Dressler, as General Director Preysing in Grand Hotel (1932), as Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1934), as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa! (1934), and his title role in The Champ (1931), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Beery appeared in some 250 films during a 36-year career. His contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer stipulated in 1932 that he would be paid $1 more than any other contract player at the studio. This made Beery the highest-paid film actor in the world during the early 1930s. He was the brother of actor Noah Beery and uncle of actor Noah Beery Jr.
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Joaquin Murrieta Carrillo, also called the Robin Hood of the West or the Robin Hood of El Dorado, was a Mexican figure of disputed historicity. The novel The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit (1854) by John Rollin Ridge is ostensibly his story.
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Joseph Calleia was a Maltese-born American actor and singer on the stage and in films, radio and television.
Petros "Pedro" Regas, a veteran stage actor, Regas was spotted on the Broadway stage by Mary Pickford who persuaded him to go to Hollywood and be in pictures, which he did in 1920 and continued to play in films for 50 years.
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Sonora Pass is a mountain pass in the Sierra Nevada in California. It is the second-highest pass with a road in California and in the Sierra Nevada. It is 321 feet (98 m) lower than Tioga Pass to the south. State Route 108 traverses the pass, as does the Pacific Crest Trail.
Down Argentine Way is a 1940 American musical film made in Technicolor by Twentieth Century Fox. It made a star of Betty Grable in her first leading role for the studio although she had already appeared in 31 films, and it introduced American audiences to Carmen Miranda. It also starred Don Ameche, The Nicholas Brothers, Charlotte Greenwood, and J. Carrol Naish.
Harry Love was the head of California's first state-wide law enforcement agency, the California Rangers, and became famous for allegedly killing the notorious bandit Joaquin Murrieta. The California Rangers were also considered to be part of California's early state militia, the predecessor to the current California Army National Guard, with Love holding the rank of Captain within the state.
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