Main Cast: Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, Donald Sinden, Eric Pohlmann, Philip Stainton
Release Year: 1953
Country: US
Run Time: 115 minutes
Plot
The 1953 Clark Gable film Mogambo is a remake of Gable's 1932 seriocomic adventure Red Dust. Where the earlier film was lensed on the MGM backlot, Mogambo was shot on location in Africa by director John Ford. Gable is safari leader Victor Marswell, who plays "host" to stranded Eloise Y. Kelly (Ava Gardner, who is no better than she ought to be but is just right for our raffish hero -- the Gardner role was originally played along franker pre-Code lines by Jean Harlow). Anthropologist Donald Nordley (Donald Sinden) hires Victor to lead him into the deepest, darkest jungle. Along for the ride is Donald's wife, Linda (Grace Kelly), outwardly cool as a cucumber but secretly harboring a lust for Victor. Scorned, Kelly tries to kill Victor, but true-blue Eloise takes the blame for the shooting. Reportedly, Grace Kelly carried on an off-camera romance with Clark Gable, which ended when the differences in their ages proved insurmountable. Even so, it is the easy rapport between Gable and Ava Gardner which stole the show in Mogambo. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
The stars (and the scenery) are the thing in Mogambo, John Ford's somewhat lackluster remake of Red Dust. Forget about the script; it's not terrible, by any means, but it's also not particularly good, with dialogue that's incredibly uneven. More problematically, the romance and the adventure don't quite come together here, making the film feel as if it's two separate movies occupying one space; the love triangle wins out, but it's a bit of a struggle. Ford seems to want to emphasize the Hemingway-esque aspects of the situation, but the female stars are just too strong. They're almost too strong for Clark Gable, and that's saying a lot. Perhaps because he was getting a bit long in the tooth by the time of Mogambo, Gable has to struggle to hold his own -- but he does manage to pull it off. Truth to tell, even the gorgeous and icily enticing Grace Kelly has to struggle, for the sexily alluring Ava Gardner threatens to walk off with the entire picture. It's arguably Gardner's finest performance, certainly one of her most enjoyable, and she plays her role for all it's worth. This forces Kelly to work all the harder, the competition between the two actresses transferring quite effectively to the characters they play. It's a delight watching this trio interact with each other, and the sparks they generate make up for Mogambo's shortcomings. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Eloise Y. 'Honey Bear' Kelly (Gardner) arrives at a remote African outpost, looking for a rich maharajah acquaintance, only to find he has decided to cancel his trip. While waiting for the next river boat out, she toys with hardworking big game hunter Victor Marswell (Gable), who (initially) has no respect for her type. When the river boat returns it brings with it Donald Nordley (Donald Sinden) and his wife Linda (Grace Kelly) ready to go on safari. Miss Kelly departs. Later that day Mr. Nordley is taken ill with a reaction to his Tse tse fly inoculations. From this it transpires the Nordleys wish to make the longer and more arduous trip to record gorillas. Marswell declines to take them. Later that night Miss Kelly returns in a row boat after the river steamer has run aground farther down river. There is some friction between Miss Kelly and Mrs. Nordley while her husband recovers after Miss Kelly witnesses Mrs. Nordley and Marswell together.
After Donald Nordley has recovered, Marswell agrees to go up into the gorilla country, taking Miss Kelly halfway to join the District Commissioner and travel back by that route. However, when they get there, they find the commissioner badly wounded by only recently belligerent natives. With a column of reinforcements days away, the small party is able to escape by the slimmest of margins, taking the mortally wounded commissioner with them. Miss Kelly is thus forced to continue with the Nordleys and Marswell.
Meanwhile, a serious romance is developing between Marswell and Mrs. Nordley, and everyone in the party is aware except Mr. Nordley. The situation is so bad that it is leading to clashes between Mr. Nordley and other members of the group. Miss Kelly tries to warn Mrs. Nordley of Marswell's character but is rebuffed. Marswell himself, while setting up to photograph and capture gorillas with Nordley, even tries to tell Nordley, but a charging "bull" gorilla cuts him off and he has to shoot the beast.
Having killed the leader of the gorilla troop, Marswell is depressed and that night in camp begins a drinking bout in his tent. It is then that Miss Kelly shows up and throws herself across his lap and asks for a drink too. She and Marswell are drowning their sorrows and lauding each other as friends, and their drinking leads to some light-hearted kissing and caressing, at which point Mrs. Nordley appears. Marswell's dismissive remarks on her infatuation with him as "the White Hunter" enrages her, and she takes Marswell's pistol and shoots him as he tries to flee the tent, wounding him in the right arm. When the rest of the camp shows up, Miss Kelly explains that Marswell has been making advances at Mrs. Nordley for some time, and now having done so in a drunken state, has forced her to shoot him as a last resort. Everyone laughs and goes off, with Mr. Nordley saying that Marswell is lucky his wife did the shooting, since he would have done the deed himself, and more effectively. This episode resolves the tension between Miss Kelly and Mrs. Nordley, ends the relationship between Mrs. Nordley and Marswell, and finally ends the estrangement of Mrs. Nordley from her husband. Also, this dramatic scene clears the air without ever allowing the cuckolded husband, Donald Nordley, to know what was really going on.
The next day, the party decamps, leaving Marswell behind to try to capture some young gorillas to pay for the safari. Marswell is able to bring himself to make a proposal of marriage to Miss Kelly but she now rebuffs him. As the canoes are pulling away down the river, she watches him stand on the bank and she jumps in the river and part swims and part wades back to him. The two embrace and the movie ends.
The entire movie turns on this love quadrangle—Kelly-Marswell-Mrs. Nordley-Mr. Nordley—and the contrapostion of the obviousness of the developing affair between Mrs. Nordley and Marswell, and the innocence of Mr. Nordley (even to the point of defending Marswell when another member of Marswell's party tries to inform him).
Production notes
Grace Kelly was not the first choice for the role of Linda Nordley. Gene Tierney dropped out due to her emotional problems. The movie was filmed on location in Okalataka, French Congo; Mount Kenya, Thika, Kenya- you can see Mt Longonot and Lake Naivasha, both in the Kenyan Rift Valley, and Fourteen Falls near Thika as backdrops- Kagera River, Tanganyika; Isoila, Uganda; and at the MGM British Studios, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England, UK. The film offers some of the best wildlife shots taken of the African continent, at the time. However there were never gorillas in Kenya so the locations are an odd mix from a naturalist perspective. The music is all performed by local native tribes (except for Gardner accompanied by player piano), unusual for Hollywood, and the film records a traditional Africa that has long since passed. For these sequences alone the film is worth watching.
Subsequently, the Francoist Spanish censors wanted to hide the issue of adultery, and changed the dubbing to make the Nordleys brother and sister. As a result, it appeared to be an even more scandalous case of incest.
The theme for Mogambo was loosely adapted by Mark Barber for the Auckland University Tramping Club Revue in 1954. A party travelling down the Anawhata on the first Saturday of the May vacation discovered that the cry 'Mogambo' could be produced with great volume and had very satisfactory resonant qualities. It became a club call, of greeting or when making contact on a tramp, for many years.
Murray "Murray the K" Kauffman, popular 1950s and 1960s New York City DJ, used the chant "Ah, Bey, ah bey, koowi zowa zowa" lifted from Mogambo as one of his trademark on-air phrases.
