Themes: Righting the Wronged, Schemes and Ruses, Miscarriage of Justice
Main Cast: Gary Cooper, Paulette Goddard, Howard Da Silva, Boris Karloff, Ward Bond, Katherine de Mille
Release Year: 1947
Country: US
Run Time: 146 minutes
Plot
Cecil B. DeMille's first postwar production, the $5 million Technicolor historical spectacular Unconquered lacks only the kitchen sink. The story begins in England in the 1760s, as Abigail Martha Hale (Paulette Goddard), unjustly accused of a crime against the Crown, is sentenced by the Lord Chief Justice (C. Aubrey Smith) to 14 years' forced servitude in North America. Carted off to the auction block, Abigail is highly coveted by slavemaster Martin Garth (Howard da Silva), but the highest bidder turns out to be Virginia militiaman Captain Christopher Holden (Gary Cooper). Having been jilted by his aristocratic fiancee Diana (Virginia Grey), Holden harbors no romantic feelings for Abigail, but he's determined not to let her fall into Garth's grimy clutches. The patriotic Holden also knows that Garth, who is married to the daughter (Katherine de Mille) of Indian chief Pontiac (Robert Warwick), has been trading firearms to the Ottawas. The treacherous Garth later participates in the "Pontiac Conspiracy," an allegiance of 18 Indian nations forsworn to wipe out every colonist on the East Coast. To put Holden out of the way, Garth arranges for him to be court-martialed and sentenced to death on a trumped-up desertion charge. But Abigail, partly in repayment for her rescue from Seneca chief Guyasuta (Boris Karloff) and partly because she's fallen in love with Holden, helps him escape, just in time to save a nearby military fort from an Indian massacre -- a feat accomplished by a subterfuge straight out of Beau Geste, which also starred Gary Cooper! As historically suspect as any Cecil B. DeMille epic, Unconquered is still marvelous escapist entertainment, especially during the time-honored bathtub scene involving a bare-shouldered Paulette Goddard (who spends most of the film in either a state of dishabille or bondage, or both!) Once again, however, Mr. "Spare No Expense" DeMille cuts corners by filming most of his major exterior scenes within the artificial confines of the Paramount sound stages. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Hans Dreier - Art Director, Walter Tyler - Art Director, Jack Crosby - Choreography, Iron Eyes Cody - Consultant/advisor, Gwen Wakeling - Costume Designer, Barbara Karinska - Costume Designer, Cecil B. DeMille - Director, Anne Bauchens - Editor, Victor Young - Composer (Music Score), Ray Evans - Songwriter, Jay Livingston - Songwriter, Wally Westmore - Makeup, Ray Rennahan - Cinematographer, Cecil B. DeMille - Producer, Sam Comer - Set Designer, Stanley J. Sawley - Set Designer, Farciot Edouart - Special Effects, Gordon Jennings - Special Effects, Devereaux Jennings - Special Effects, W. Wallace Kelley - Special Effects, Paul K. Lerpae - Special Effects, Fredric M. Frank - Screenwriter, Jesse Lasky, Jr. - Screenwriter, Charles Bennett - Screenwriter, Neil H. Swanson - Book Author
This article is missing citations or needs footnotes. Please help add inline citations to guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. (December 2006)
Unconquered is a 1947 adventure film produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille and released by Paramount. The film depicts the violent struggles between American colonists and Native Americans on the western frontier in the mid-eighteenth century, primarily around Fort Pitt (modern-day Pittsburgh). It stars Gary Cooper and Paulette Goddard.
Based on Neil Swanson's Unconquered, a Novel of the Pontiac Conspiracy, the film focuses on "Abby" Hale (Paulette Goddard), who is condemned to death by a British court, then offered clemency if she will become an indentured servant in America. There is a bidding competition between Captain Christopher Holden (Gary Cooper) and Martin Garth (Howard Da Silva), which Holden wins. He then sets her free. Unfortunately, Garth is a sore loser; he kidnaps Abby and takes her to the western frontier, where he is involved in illegal arms sales to the Native Americans. Soon, Holden becomes involved in the conflict with the warring tribes and is reunited with Abby; he also has further confrontations with Garth and his henchman (Mike Mazurki).
During filming, DeMille became enraged when Paulette Goddard refused to participate in a dangerous battle scene involving flaming arrows; several members of the cast were actually injured, but DeMille was so angry with Goddard that he refused to use her again in any of his later films, even when she begged him to cast her in the 1952 production of The Greatest Show on Earth.
The movie was filmed in three-strip Technicolor, with considerable location shooting.
As was customary in many of his films, DeMille himself narrated some of the story.
The original Neil Swanson novel, on which the film was based, was prefaced by an excerpt from a genuine historical document, providing much of the background: a letter concerning the Holdens of Virginia, written by one of their descendants in the frontier village of St. Anthony in Minnesota, at the great falls of the Mississippi, in the summer of 1862 - a century after the time of the plot.
"My great-grandmother was a slave. She was white. She was an English girl. Yet she was exhibited and sold at auction, not by barbarous Algerian but by the brutal 1aws of her own people. For it was even possible, in those days, for a man who had grown weary of his wife to put a rope around her neck, lead her to a public market, and there sell her.
This girl was a virgin. She was accused of murder, tried, found guilty, sentenced to the gallows-and then given the harsh choice of death by hanging or of slavery. (In a court in London) To live was to hope. She chose life, and so became the property of a man who lusted for her, though he had a wife.
She was young when these things happened-only seventeen-and it is said that she was very lovely. I tell you of her so that you may see how far a journey we have come from the day when, in America, a white girl could be sold and bought as you would sell or buy a cow, a horse, a dog - could be lawfully and publicly stripped naked, whipped, shamed, and degraded" ([1]).
