From the 1950s: Mogambo

1953 Romance Adventure 

From MGM

Directed by John Ford

Starring

Clark Gable

Ava Gardner

Grace Kelly

Donald Sinden

Philip Stainton

Eric Pohlmann

Laurence Naismith

Denis O'Dea

Clark Gable stars in a remake of his own 1932 film, Red Dust.  In the former he ran a rubber plantation in Malaysia while in this one he heads a big game trapping company in Kenya.  Much of the story essentially remains the same, as does some of the dialogue.  The former was filmed on the MGM backlot while this one is filmed not only in Kenya but also Tanzania, Uganda and the Congo.  The former was filmed in black and while while Mogambo is in glorious Technicolor.

Actually, Gable didn't want to make the film.  Why would I want to make a movie I've already done, he complained.  Fair enough but there was nothing else the studio had for him to do and with John Ford directing, it was expected to be a bigger hit than the former.  Mayer pointed out that he needed a hit.  He hadn't had one in years.  He jumped on board when he learned that two beautiful MGM employees would be joining him.

This would be his third film with Ava Gardner.  Neither one of them liked their first two, The Hucksters  (1947) and Lone Star  (1950), but they very much liked one another.  They remained good enough friends to be invited to one another's parties and to lunch together in the studio commissary.  And maybe the third time would be the charm... maybe Mogambo would be something they would be proud of.

Gable was aware his other leading lady, Grace Kelly, was new to the studio and that she had just signed a seven-year contract.  This would be her largest part to date and she was excited.  She was a Gable fan.  He was already a fan of hers because he felt she looked similar to his late wife, actress Carole Lombard.  Oh, this was going to be fun. 

The focus of the story is the big game hunter who runs a business out of his jungle compound that includes a number of animals in cages, waiting to be shipped off to zoos, and his unexpected involvement with the two  women (one married) staying at his lodge.   

Gardner is a New York playgirl who has been invited to the African compound by a visiting maharajah but when she arrives she finds he has left.  Gable didn't know she was arriving and both are a little out of sorts about the whole thing.  While they spar it is obvious that each is a little interested in the other.  She drops lots of hints without really saying much and she is annoyed her purring has gone largely unnoticed.  

There are, of course, those African breaks from the near-romance where we are introduced to the caged animals, watching an adorable scene with Gardner and a baby elephant and savor the stunning photography of Robert Surtees and Freddie Young.  I don't know whose idea it was for Gardner to mistake a baby rhino for a kangaroo and unfortunately I've never forgotten it.

Eventually it's decided she will leave on the next boat which is also delivering Kelly and Donald Sinden, a British anthropologist and his tightly wound wife.  They have arrived to go on a safari to photograph and record sounds of gorillas.

Gardner is soon back because her boat had engine problems.  She and Kelly are wary of one another but it will get worse.  While Sinden is bedded with a fever, Kelly becomes a bit unmanageable in her angst and slaps Gable.  She is humble and apologetic and he has become smitten.

He takes her into the bush so she see the splendors of his property.  They hem and haw about whether to start a romance but by the time they're back at the compound and her front door, he attempts to kiss her but she dashes inside.  Neither of them see Gardner watching them.  She's pissed and takes on both of them with her amusing and cutting barbs. 

Finally it's time for the safari.  It's decided that Gardner will come along and at some point will catch a boat.  The two women continue their verbal fisticuffs as we take in some dangers on canoes and the need for them to run from a militant tribe.

Kelly is a mixed-up young woman, not sure of what or whom she wants although relatively sure she doesn't like the way things are progressing.  Still, she completely fascinates Gable and is fascinated by him while she's  torn up by her own faithlessness.  Gardner tries to talk to Kelly about whether she knows what she's getting herself into but is rebuffed.

The gorilla scenes will not rival the future Gorillas in the Mist but they are nicely done.  Because of the particulars and dangers of these scenes, which included Gable, Kelly and Sinden, they weren't filmed until all other location filming was completed, just before the company left Africa.

But back at the camp, Gardner is annoyed.  Sure she wants Gable for herself but she thinks he and Kelly are a decided mismatch.  She knows he is not leaving his work or property and that Kelly would never make a future of schlepping around the dusty compound.

So she devises a plot.  She and Gable get to drinking in a tent and they start laughing and getting louder.  Just as she falls into his arms, Kelly comes bursting into the tent like a wounded kangaroo... oops, I mean rhino... and off the three of them go.  Kelly argues with Gable and while he's holding his own, there's Gardener throwing out her poisonous little darts until the point where Kelly grabs a gun and shoots Gable, nicking him in his upper arm.  That brings Sinden into the tent, ever the gentle soul, who comforts his wife.  Uncomfortably the safari is over.  Gardner has also missed her boat.

Finally everyone is back at the compound with things quietly tense as Kelly and Sinden depart.  No one appears happy so Gardner boards her craft as well.  The boat doesn't get very far.  Gable is shouting sweet things to her from the shore.  She jumps out and swims back to him.  We just know it's all gonna work out, Africa-style. 

When MGM offered John Ford the opportunity to direct Mogambo, he jumped at it.  He would always consider it one of his inconsequential films and I would actually have to agree with that.  That's not to put the film down and it is a good, highly-entertaining movie (far better than the original) but it's not a Ford film.  It's not a western, not a war film, it wasn't filmed in Monument Valley.  There's no Wayne, O'Hara, Fonda, Bond, McLaglen or those scores of costars who occupied most Ford films.  Almost none of the standard Ford crew is here.   Interestingly, once he became involved, it was thought the leads would be O'Hara, Stewart Granger and Gene Tierney.

Ford didn't hate making the film nor did he dislike the finished product.  He would sometimes refer to it as entertaining and on that score, I'll give him the Oscar.  He jumped at the offer for one reason... he wanted to go to Africa.  The company would be there around four months and that sounded like the respite he needed as a break from his personal life which wasn't going so well.  

Ford could be an s.o.b on his usual film sets.  He always chose someone to humiliate in public.  It most certainly would not have been Gable who was still king around MGM and still a huge name although his star was starting to dim.  Gable did not like Ford, didn't like his tactics but it seemed as though Ford treated the actor with respect.  The director liked Kelly but she was perhaps a little too patrician for his tastes.  She was still learning the ropes on this film and certainly cooperated with Ford.   More importantly, she was busy falling in love.  

Ford and Gardner

Gardner was far more Ford's type... a profanity-laden, booze-swilling, funny, caring, amorous good sport who loved the company of men.  But he didn't find too much of that until close to the film ending.  In the beginning, trying to be helpful, she spoke out of turn and enraged him.  He gave her grief for a few days and suddenly it was over.  Ford treated her more respectfully and they came to admire one another.  He thought Gardner was a wonderful actress.  

Gardner's about-to-be-ex-husband, Frank Sinatra, was at the Uganda main location for awhile.  They initiated a new continent with their usual behavior... drinking, fighting and making love.  When he left once to return to California and audition for From Here to Eternity, Gardner hopped over to London and had an abortion.  She felt terrible about it, she said, but didn't think her lifestyle, including an impending divorce, was the right environment for a child.

Kelly had a romance with Gary Cooper on their High Noon.  He was a super player, we didn't yet know Kelly was, too.  In time we'd learn that she had a thing for older men and that she sacked most of her costars.  She was not in a relationship at the time of making Mogambo and Gable had recently been divorced.  She'd had a thing about him most of her life and now here he was panting for her out in the bush with the sounds of wild animals in the distance.  If that weren't enough, there was all that sultry posturing on screen as well.

Love in the bush

It's possible that Gable didn't see it as being a whole lot more than a satisfying location romance.  But Gardner and others said that Kelly had fallen in love with Gable.  She followed him around like a new puppy.  At 51 to her 27, he knew he wasn't going to pursue anything with her.  It took her awhile longer to realize that marriage was out of the question.  She was a good Catholic girl and he was a three-time divorced man.  At the same time, a crew member would say that Kelly may have seemed prim and proper but she could pass the bottle around with the rest of us.   

Age had stolen away some of that dashing appeal that brought him stardom and it was replaced with a sophisticated gentleman that, by and large, he would play in most of his future films.  Here he continued to exude a rugged confidence, an occasional quick temper, a requirement to be in charge, a facility for being fair and his ever-present manly way with women.

By 1953 he was no longer as rough with women in the clenches.  He had replaced that by being gentle as he enveloped Kelly and Gardner in his arms.   He looked exactly the same with both.  It was a technique.  Pardon the pun but he did it all with such grace.  I guess that's why he was the king of Hollywood.

Clark Gable was one of the great movie stars.  I found little wrong with his acting.  What he brought to the screen was a great awareness of who he was and how he was going to present it.  His star wattage helped turn Mogambo into the huge crowd-pleaser that it became.

Ava Gardner said this was her favorite role.  She felt the character was most like her of all those she played.  She was lighter, funnier, her general fun while making the film seemed apparent.  She would become a life-long friend of the future princess.  She would receive her only Oscar nomination as best actress.  It would also be my favorite Gardner role until she made The Night of the Iguana.

Grace Kelly kept up with her more experienced costars and would receive her first Oscar nomination (in the supporting category) for her efforts.  She wanted to make the film because of Africa, Gable and the fact that she knew it would be good for her career.  It helped put her on the road to great fame.

I have 15 biographies on Gable, Gardner, Kelly and Ford and I know one thing for sure.  Despite an assistant director being killed when his Jeep overturned, some nasty business with Sinatra, Gardner's abortion, an impromptu visit by Kelly's mother, the threat of disease, the heat, rain, mud, mosquitoes, flies, the water, the remoteness and the animals that sometimes watch you instead of you watching them, all said it was a wonderfully happy experience, full of laughter, love, friendship, drinking and even very fine dining.  

And they didn't get there or stay there easily.  The crew built an 1800-yard airstrip so mail , food and medical supplies could be flown in from Nairobi and the daily rushes could be flown out.  MGM assembled one of the largest safaris, over 500 people, including eight hunters.  Shooting in the bush required the set up of 300 tents, including luxurious ones for the three stars, a wardrobe tent (each lead had three sets of each costume), a make-up tent, one for hair, a hospital tent with its own x-ray machine.  There was a theater tent for showing movies and one for playing pool.  There were dining tents and even one set up as a jail in case any wild human beasts needed caging.  At the Kenya location the studio hired extra armed guards (aside from the Mogambo company's own 30-man security force) to protect cast and crew from any mishaps regarding the Mau Mau uprising in the general area. 

I've always loved just saying Mogambo.  I move to the rhythms of those jungle drums when I do.  The trailer which follows says that the word means greatest.  Gardner said it meant passion and also to speak.  But the film's producer Sam Zimbalist said he made it up by changing one letter in the name of his favorite Hollywood nightclub, Mocambo.  Now we know. 

Mogambo.

Mogambo.

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The French-American