Treasure of the Golden Condor (1953)

January 29th, 2023
Author: Meredith Taylor

Dir: Delmer Davies | Cast: Cornel Wilde, Constance Smith, Anne Bancroft, Finlay Currie, Walter Hampden | US Drama 93’

Delmer Daves couldn’t make a dull film if his life depended on it but he had a jolly good try with this glossy Technicolor remake of Son of Fury with Cornel Wilde in Tyrone Power’s role of an illiterate stable lad who goes out into the big wide world to make his fortune in Guatemala with the aid of a treasure map.

George Macready memorably plays his usual sanctimonious villain, and this is the only film I recall where he personally engages in fisticuffs himself. Finlay Currie in a tam-o-shanter does his usual Scotts thing, while the women include Fay Wray and Anne Bancroft (the latter in the role played in the original by Frances Farmer).

Officially Alfred Newman wrote the music, but the resemblance of a couple of musical cues to ‘North by Northwest’ serves as a reminder that Bernard Herrmann was then under contract to Fox. @RichardChatten

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