Northwest Rangers

This B movie remake of MANHATTAN MELODRAMA set in the Yukon was the one of the salvos that MGM fired in its attempt to use James Craig as a replacement for Gable while the King of Hollywood was at war. Craig is pretty good at the Gable role and there is a pretty good supporting cast, including Keenan Wynn, Jack Holt and particularly John Carradine as a crooked gambler.

The problem is that Patricia Dane in the female lead is pretty stiff trying to play her role like Myrna Loy and William Lundigan, although competent, brings not a hint of the sparkle that William Powell did to his performance. Nor does director Joseph Newman take advantage of the nominally outdoor nature of the big finale. Everyone moves as if they are on a sound stage and the ending is abrupt. Perhaps it comes down to the fact that Newman did not serve the material as well as might be hoped.

1942's "Northwest Rangers" was MGM's streamlined 'B' remake of their own "Manhattan Melodrama," with James Craig suitably cast as Clark Gable's Blackie, but William Lundigan a woeful replacement in the William Powell good guy part. The 1934 original ran a full 93 minutes, this programmer a meager 64, but its predictability is really an asset, the boyhood friends Jim and Blackie orphaned by an Indian attack, subsequently reared by dedicated Mountie Duncan Frazier (Jack Holt), who proves unable to curb Blackie's gambling ways, while inspiring Jim to follow in his law abiding footsteps. Best of all is John Carradine, cast in typical villainous mode as Martin Caswell, owner of notorious gambling den The Topaz, who makes the mistake of humiliating the young Blackie at the roulette wheel, only to have the adult Blackie return years later to claim The Topaz for his own by denying Caswell his cheating ways. Carradine's scene stealing work keep things from getting dull, though they do slow to a crawl whenever he's offscreen (the best 'honest' hand wins!). In only his third feature film, Keenan Wynn does very well as Blackie's fast talking accomplice, but leading lady Patricia Dane proves to be no match for Myrna Loy, quickly returning to obscurity after Abbott and Costello's "Rio Rita." Among the unbilled extras are several faces familiar on television decades later- Jim Davis (as a Mountie sharing a scene with Jack Holt), Hugh (LEAVE IT TO BEAVER) Beaumont (a Mountie opposite William Lundigan), and perennial Jewish mother Kay Medford, unaccountably young and pretty as the showgirl that first greets Blackie upon his return to The Topaz (she calls him 'Cookie!'). Carradine would later star opposite James Craig in 1969's "Bigfoot," and with Darryl Hickman, former co-star in "The Grapes of Wrath" (as the youngest Joad, Winfield), in a 1959 GUNSMOKE, "Target," cast as father and son.

From the mean streets of New York to British Columbia in Canada, the plot of the classic Manhattan Melodrama is transferred with the roles that Clark Gable, William Powell,and Myrna Loy are played by James Craig, William Lundigan and Patricia Dane respectively.

Two kids whose parents are killed by Indians are taken in by Mountie Jack Holt and grow up to be Craig and Lundigan. Craig's a bad boy, but charming as all get out. He takes to the gambling life ready to risk all at the turn of a roulette wheel and does. A Pacific northwest version of Gaylord Ravenal

In the meantime Lundigan grows up and becomes a Mountie. Of the Dudley Doo Right type. It's the main weakness of Northwest Rangers, Lundigan's portrayal. Patricia Dane is the saloon singer they both loved.

If you've seen Manhattan Melodrama than you know how all this is going to end up. John Carradine as another gambler and rival of Craig steals this film whenever he's on the screen.

Trivia note: Darryl Hickman turning into James Craig as an adult??? I don't think so.

JAMES CRAIG and WILLIAM LUNDIGAN co-star as two orphans who are reunited years later when Lundigan is a Mountie and Craig is a big gambler who started his gambling career in JOHN CARRADINE's gambling joint as a kid. PATRICIA DANE is a self-confident singer from Frisco who catches the eye of Craig when she makes the mistake of applying for a job from Carradine. KEENAN WYNN has a supporting role as Carradine's sidekick.

Strictly a third-rate B-picture from MGM, reminiscent of many another programmer about a woman who comes between two friends. Production values are on the low-budget or modest side. PATRICIA DANE is stiff and unconvincing as the girl both brothers love.

Lundigan looks good in his Mountie uniform but both he and Craig are on the bland side as far as screen charisma is concerned. Craig's role as "Blackie Morton" seems like a poor imitation of Gable's "Blackie Norton" role in SAN FRANCISCO.

The plot hinges on Carradine losing his gambling place and then gambling Craig to win it back. A showdown of a fight between Craig and GRANT WITHERS over a gambling debt, at a mine, has Withers falling to his death down a mine shaft. When Lundigan announces he's going to marry Dane, the rest of the plot has to do with how Craig's murderous ways will be discovered, including the truth about the mine shaft murder, and how the love interest will be resolved.

Of course, good wins over evil. When the chips are down, it's up to Lundigan to play the hero and solve the problem his way in the tradition of the Mounties "always getting their man".

Sorry to say that handsome JAMES CRAIG is totally unconvincing as the black-hearted gambler in this poorly directed and scripted programmer and Lundigan's role is so underwritten he can do little with it.

It merely passes the time quickly with a short running time.

Not bad at all this early Joseph Newman's film, very moving, poignant, but maybe too short. It should have been far longer than sixty five minutes. Characters depiction is so well done that I hardly believe it for such a B production. John Carradine also in a surprising performance; but Carradine was excellent everywhere, whatever the characters he played. So I highly recomment this little western drama from the early forties, during WW2. The scheme of childhood friends whose paths split, one good and one "less" good, was of course inspired by MANHATTAN MELODRAMA, this notorious Woddy Van Dyke's masterpiece, made six years earlier.