Themes: White People Among Indians, Taming the West
Main Cast: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop
Release Year: 1962
Country: US
Run Time: 113 minutes
Plot
The 1939 adventure classic Gunga Din is transferred from British India to the American West, courtesy of Frank Sinatra's "Clan." Sinatra, Dean Martin and Peter Lawford play three cavalry officers, always ready for a brawl but willing to die for each other if need be. Sammy Davis Jr. a cavalry bugler who has aspirations of being a combat soldier. The three officers and the bugler take on a Napoleonic Native American chief, who plans to unify all the tribes and kill every white man in sight. Davis does his "Gunga" bit by blowing his bugle and warning the approaching cavalry that they're riding into a trap. About all that isn't pilfered from Gunga Din is the death of the noble bugler; Davis survives being shot up by the Indians with little more than a flesh wound! Sergeants Three also stars another Sinatra crony, Joey Bishop, playing the role originally essayed in Gunga Din by Robert Coote. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Sad to say, Sergeants Three is one of John Sturges's lesser movies from a period in which the director was making generally superb films, including several notable westerns. It could have been a better picture than it is, given its source material (lifted from Gunga Din) and a cast that included Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Peter Lawford -- and plot with all kinds of topicality, dealing with the struggle of one man (Davis) for dignity and a place where he could call himself a man on the American frontier. But it's more of a fun romp than anything else, with the cast members, apart from Davis, having more of a good time than they are putting their acting muscles to serious work; and the comedic aspect is the flattest part of the picture, a fatal flaw in a movie that wasn't taking itself too seriously at any stage of production. Sturges could do serious movies about as well as anyone in Hollywood, as his early films such as Mystery Street and The People Against O'Hara demonstrated. And starting eight years earlier, with Bad Day At Black Rock (1954), actually a kind of modern western with a strong story at its center about racial prejudice with deadly consequences, he'd been making important movies, even under adverse conditions -- witness Gunfight At The OK Corral (1957), a picture on which he was only a hired director, but which was filled with powerful scenes and superb acting; and Last Train To Gun Hill (1959), about as finely acted and structured a western as you could hope to find; and then, from there, come the mega-hits The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963), on which he was the producer as well as the director, and all of the huge productions that followed on from there. But Sergeants Three fails because it is, at heart, a comedy, and comedy was one area that Sturges never succeeded at -- look at The Hallelujah Trail (1965), a gargantuan misfire, to see how much he was not a comedy director. Sergeants Three is less dire than that later work, but its flat where the jokes should rise to the fore, and too light where the serious sides of the plot see the light of day. All of which doesn't mean it isn't fun to see Frank, and Dean, and Peter, and Sammy (and Jjoey Bishop) -- just don't expect anything too substantial. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Henry Silva - Mountain Hawk; Buddy Lester - Willie Sharpknife; Phillip Crosby - Corporal Ellis; Dennis Crosby - Private Page; Lindsay Crosby - Pvt. Wills; Hank Henry - Blacksmith; Dick Simmons - Col. William Collingwood; Michael Pate - Watanka; Armand Alzamora - Caleb; Richard Hale - White Eagle; Mickey Finn - Morton; Edward Little Sky - Ghost Dancer; Rodd Redwing - Irregular; Madge Blake - Mrs. Parent; Dorothy Abbott - Mrs. Collingwood; Wally Merrill - Telegrapher; Mack Gray - Bartender; Ruta Lee - Amelia Parent; James Waters - Colonel's Aide; Herny Silva
Credit
Frank Hotaling - Art Director, Angela Alexander - Costume Designer, Wes Jeffries - Costume Designer, John Sturges - Director, Ferris Webster - Editor, Howard W. Koch - Executive Producer, Billy May - Composer (Music Score), Franz Steininger - Songwriter, Johnny Rotella - Songwriter, Winton Hoch - Cinematographer, Frank Sinatra - Producer, Victor A. Gangelin - Set Designer, Paul Pollard - Special Effects, W.R. Burnett - Screenwriter
Sinatra wanted to use the title Soldiers Three but couldn't get the rights as the title was owned by MGM for another Gunga Din-inspired story set in India.
The only Rat Pack film not produced by Sinatra was Ocean's 11. This one earned $4.3 million in rentals at the North American box office, being ranked by Variety as the 14th highest-earning film of 1962.
"The Lost Sinatra Film"
Seldom seen after its initial run in cinemas, never granted a release on home video, it seemed as though only a major event could bring Sergeants 3 to DVD. Such seems to have been the case, an announcement being made in February 2008 that the film would be released on DVD as a single disc and as part of a new Rat Pack box set to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Frank Sinatra's death on May 13, 2008.
Critical reception
Sergeants 3 was met with middling reviews on release. Variety labeled it as "warmed-over Gunga Din in a westernized version of that epic, with American-style Indians and Vegas-style soldiers of fortune. The essential differences between the two pictures, other than the obvious one of setting, is that the emphasis in Gunga was serious with a tongue-in-cheek overtone, whereas the emphasis in Sergeants is tongue-in-cheek with serious overtones."
Rat Pack
Each of the Rat Pack's films contained a numeral in its title. The others were: Ocean's Eleven (1960), Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964, with Joey Bishop missing and Bing Crosby replacing Peter Lawford), and 4 for Texas with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Anita Ekberg and Ursula Andress as the four in the title and Charles Bronson as villain. Sinatra said of these Rat Pack films: "Of course they're not great movies, no-one could claim that... but every movie I've made through my own company has made money."
Third Version
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom comprises a second remake of much of the material in the earlier two films, especially the first one, including the rope bridge sequence performed by Cary Grant in 1939 and Dean Martin in 1962.[citation needed]
