Ben Lyon is on his way to the Yukon for the gold rush, but there's a lot of other stuff going on, what with him and Anna Q. Nilsson being in love but she can't marry him because she's married to rotter Philo McCullough. Then there's Viola Dana, whose father, Hobart Bosworth gets killed on the way. She's rescued by everyone at one time or another, but mostly by voyageur Victor McLaglen. What else? Oh, yeah, there's Claude Gillingwater and Charles Crockett as partnered prsopectors who argue constantly, Dorothy Sebastian as the dance-hall girl with a passion for Lyon, and about two thousand extras, looks like.
It's based on yet another Rex Beach novel about the Yukon Gold Rush. Beach had been a popular source for such films since the immense success of the 1914 version of THE SPOILERS. It's clear that First National decided they had a winner on their hands, so they gave director Frank Lloyd his head, hired a first-rate cast, and let him build Dawson City on the Truckee. Yet I kept wondering if it was necessary to show this detail or that scene. Maybe they could have cut the pursuit of the bad guys a bit short of the U.S. border. At just over two hours, this is an epic, but there's nothing about the gold fields themselves. Only the boat trip down the whitewater river offers much in the way of thrills.
It's based on yet another Rex Beach novel about the Yukon Gold Rush. Beach had been a popular source for such films since the immense success of the 1914 version of THE SPOILERS. It's clear that First National decided they had a winner on their hands, so they gave director Frank Lloyd his head, hired a first-rate cast, and let him build Dawson City on the Truckee. Yet I kept wondering if it was necessary to show this detail or that scene. Maybe they could have cut the pursuit of the bad guys a bit short of the U.S. border. At just over two hours, this is an epic, but there's nothing about the gold fields themselves. Only the boat trip down the whitewater river offers much in the way of thrills.
