The Iroquois Trail | |
---|---|
Directed by | Phil Karlson |
Written by | Richard Schayer |
Based on | The Leatherstocking Tales by James Fenimore Cooper |
Produced by | Bernard Small |
Starring | George Montgomery Brenda Marshall |
Cinematography | Henry Freulich |
Edited by | Kenneth Crane |
Music by | Rudy Schrager |
Production company | Edward Small Productions |
Distributed by | United Artists |
Release date |
|
Running time | 86 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $400,000 (est.) [1] |
The Iroquois Trail is a 1950 American Western film directed by Phil Karlson starring George Montgomery and Brenda Marshall. It is set during the French-Indian War. [2] It is an adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 work The Last of the Mohicans , with significant alterations. As with the book, one of the major plot lines is based on the siege of Fort William Henry and the subsequent massacre. [3]
In 1757 the French around Montreal are poised to move south. A young American volunteer in the British Army, Sergeant Tom Cutler, is sent northwards carrying a dispatch which orders the garrison of Fort Williams to reinforce the vulnerable Crown Point outpost. Cutler is murdered on the way by two men acting as British scouts, one of whom is an Ogane, a French-allied Huron posing as a Mohawk. Crown Point is not relieved in time and falls to the French
Returning home after two years away, Sergeant Cutler's elder brother Nat "Hawkeye" Cutler and his companion, a Delaware Indian Chief Sagamore, investigate the killing of Tom, who is now wrongly believed to have been a traitor by the authorities. Nat and Sagamore enlist as scouts for the reinforcements being sent out to Fort Williams. They escort the British Captain West carrying important despatches, and Marion Thorne, the daughter of the Fort's commander. They foil an attempt by Ogane to betray them to the Hurons and bring them safety to Fort Williams. However, their apparent insubordination leaves their commander's suspicious of their loyalty.
General Montcalm is being supplied with information by a spy inside the Fort, which is carried out to him by Ogane. Montcalm ambushes a force of American infantry and advances with the French Army to lay siege to the Fort. Hawkeye is able to expose the traitor as Captain Brownwell, a French-born officer serving as quartermaster to the British forces, but is too late to stop further information passing out to Montcalm. Aware that the Fort is indefensible, Montcalm offers it favorable peace terms. This outrages Ogane who wants vengeance against the Anglo-Americans, and he leads his Hurons in a night attack in which they kill many of the Fort's defenders. Marion Thorne is kidnapped by Ogane who wants her as his wife.
Hawkeye, Captain West and Sagamore follow the Hurons and rescue Marion. They are then pursued by Ogane until they reach the shelter of the Ottawa tribe, rivals of the Hurons. The Ottawa leader suggests they can go free if one of them can defeat Ogane in single combat. Hawkeye fights and kills Ogane, and they are allowed to return home. Hawkeye is appointed as chief scout to the British forces as they prepare a fresh offensive for the following year.
Filming began June 1949. [4]
The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. At the start of the war, the French colonies had a population of roughly 60,000 settlers, compared with 2 million in the British colonies. The outnumbered French particularly depended on their native allies.
The Last of the Mohicans is a 1920 American Western silent film written by Robert A. Dillon, adapted from James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 novel of the same name. Clarence Brown and Maurice Tourneur co-directed the film. It is a story of two English sisters meeting danger on the frontier of the American colonies, in and around the fort commanded by their father. The adventure film stars Wallace Beery, Barbara Bedford, Lillian Hall, Alan Roscoe and Boris Karloff in one of his earliest silent film roles. Barbara Bedford later married her co-star in the film, Alan Roscoe in real life. The production was shot near Big Bear Lake and in Yosemite Valley.
The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 is a historical romance written by James Fenimore Cooper in 1826.
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Lake George, nicknamed the Queen of American Lakes, is a long, narrow oligotrophic lake located at the southeast base of the Adirondack Mountains, in the northeastern portion of the U.S. state of New York. It lies within the upper region of the Great Appalachian Valley and drains all the way northward into Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence River drainage basin. The lake is situated along the historical natural (Amerindian) path between the valleys of the Hudson and St. Lawrence Rivers, and so lies on the direct land route between Albany, New York, and Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The lake extends about 32.2 mi (51.8 km) on a north–south axis, is 187 ft (57 m) deep, and ranges from one to three miles in width, presenting a significant barrier to east–west travel. Although the year-round population of the Lake George region is relatively small, the summertime population can swell to over 50,000 residents, many in the village of Lake George region at the southern end of the lake.
John Lewis Hart, also credited as John Hilton, was an American film and television actor. In his early career, Hart appeared mostly in westerns. Although Hart played mostly minor roles in some fairly well known films, he was probably best known for having replaced Clayton Moore in the television series The Lone Ranger for one season (1952–53).
The Leatherstocking Tales is a series of five novels by American writer James Fenimore Cooper, set in the eighteenth-century era of development in the primarily former Iroquois areas in central New York. Each novel features Natty Bumppo, a frontiersman known to European-American settlers as "Leatherstocking", "The Pathfinder", and "the trapper". Native Americans call him "Deerslayer", "La Longue Carabine", and "Hawkeye".
The Last of the Mohicans is a 1992 American epic historical drama film set in 1757 during the French and Indian War. It was directed by Michael Mann and was based on the 1826 novel The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 by James Fenimore Cooper and the 1936 film adaptation, owing more to the film than the novel. The film stars Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe, with Jodhi May, Russell Means, Wes Studi, Eric Schweig, and Steven Waddington in supporting roles.
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Sheldon Leonard Bershad was an American actor, producer, director, and writer.
The Siege of Fort William Henry was conducted by French General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm against the British-held Fort William Henry. The fort, located at the southern end of Lake George, on the frontier between the British Province of New York and the French Province of Canada, was garrisoned by a poorly supported force of British regulars and provincial militia led by Lieutenant Colonel George Monro. After several days of bombardment, Monro surrendered to Montcalm, whose force included nearly 2,000 Indians from various tribes. The terms of surrender included the withdrawal of the garrison to Fort Edward, with specific terms that the French military protect the British from the Indians as they withdrew from the area.
The Battle of Lake George was fought on 8 September 1755, in the north of the Province of New York. It was part of a campaign by the British to expel the French from North America, in the French and Indian War.
The Last of the Mohicans is a 1936 American Western film based on the 1826 novel The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. It was directed by George B. Seitz and stars Randolph Scott, Binnie Barnes and Henry Wilcoxon.
This is a list of films featuring Harry Carey.
Nathaniel "Natty" Bumppo is a fictional character and the protagonist of James Fenimore Cooper's pentalogy of novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales.
The Battle of La Belle-Famille occurred on July 24, 1759, during the French and Indian War along the Niagara River portage trail. François-Marie Le Marchand de Lignery's French relief force for the besieged French garrison at Fort Niagara fell into Eyre Massey's British and Iroquois ambush. This action formed part of the larger Battle of Fort Niagara.
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