Ebbing Tide For Soldiers Of Fortune

Metro Hanging On To Proven Formula with Green Fire (1954)

Another 50's sample of the interchangeable star vehicle. Any leading man and woman could be plugged into Green Fire, or for that matter, much of what MGM and other limping studios turned out as TV took their viewership away. Toplined players were easily switched because most parts were pure stock, and that applied all round town. If Humphrey Bogart wouldn't do Trouble Along The Way at Warners, then get John Wayne. Should Gregory Peck ankle The Left Hand Of God, use Bogart. For casting to mean so little was reflected in cookie-cut results. You could disguise stale bread with exotic locations, but only just. MGM had reheated a loaf  baked two decades before with Mogambo, a trip to Africa and starry cast under John Ford direction sufficient to earn major profit and suggest that travel plus old-style storytelling may yet please. Green Fire would plug that approach into reprise of old Clark Gable/Spencer Tracy tropes, but this was 1954, and where were Gable and Tracy?

The script was obviously cut to their measure. What better to celebrate old times and freshened climes than to cast Leo's senior lions as fortune-hunters gone South American way on emerald search? Andes hilltops and Cinemascope would disguise frailty of dialogue and situations. Similar enterprise like Boom Town had been done on the lot and clicked, but that was 1940. Movies and their audience were something entirely different now. A new day saw such yarns go little past modesty of Pine-Thomas at Paramount, or Sterling Hayden, Richard Denning, et al, drilling for Allied Artists or RKO. There isn't trade mention of a Green Fire submit to Spencer Tracy; he'd have likely turned it down to duck an uncomfortable trip below the equator if not to avoid stench of the script, but Gable was inked early on, and for months, as co-star with Eleanor Parker under Richard Thorpe direction, this announced shortly before Mogambo broke big and CG's Metro pact coming to a finish.

Gable had soured toward Leo and saw Culver as a place old friends were leaving and at which few loyal to him remained. There was cool relations with Dore Schary. Not that Gable was fond of deposed Louis Mayer, but at least he knew better where he stood with LB; Schary glad-handed too readily for the star to trust, and besides, work they'd given him was store stock and increasingly called out for being so by wearied patronage. Money-conscious Gable was more eager to do vehicles outside US borders so he could qualify for tax exemption based on eighteen months residency offshore; his last several, including Mogambo, being shot far afield. Green Fire would have sustained the scheme, but time was running out on Gable's contract and he was fielding offers that promised not only better properties, but percentage terms in addition to up-front dollars, consideration MGM had continually denied him.

Renewal talks were ongoing just as Mogambo world-premiered in Frisco to equal a house record set by Quo Vadis, Metro's up-to-then measure for ultimate sock. If this was money Gable could bring, then letting the star go might be ill-advised. He was busy at Betrayed with Lana Turner in England, and still penciled for Green Fire to follow, but this was late into September 1953, and time might run out lest a new pact be hammered. Gable dealt from a position of new-found strength and knew it. Metro could argue of how his last, Never Let Me Go, took a loss, but here was new day with 20th Fox plus Warners eager to bargain. Had relations not frayed so, Gable might have stayed and done Green Fire, but he'd go, and Stewart Granger would hunt emeralds instead. Just another quick and easy change where character/dialogue were left more or less the same with only costumes resized to fit a new lead man.

Paul Douglas would do the Tracy bit, he and Granger as mining pals that fall out over Grace Kelly, she having replaced Eleanor Parker, who must have been thankful as she couldn't stand Stewart Granger after misery of shared scenes in Scaramouche. Kelly was the anomaly of Green Fire, coming off a remarkable run of outstanding roles ... till now. Metro held her contract, but most of work she did was on loan basis, a profitable arrangement for Leo as Grace Kelly was in constant demand after Mogambo and several for Hitchcock. A best of outside parts from prestige standpoint was The Country Girl, another from Paramount taking big grosses and rhapsodic reviews at the same time Green Fire opened for 1954's holiday season. For Kelly, it must have seemed as though her Country Girl had an ugly twin in Green Fire that would embarrass to no end as it played across streets from far better work she'd done.

 

Grace Kelly had completed Green Fire and left Colombia locations on the same day to get late start on To Catch A Thief, for which she received a "bonus" from MGM employers. Maybe they felt guilty for having made so much profit for so little effort on her behalf. Green Fire's crew was in South America for three weeks, not so long as Africa had kept Mogambo and company, but sufficient to grab mountain scenery and river course on which action is staged. The rest would be faked in hills off Mulholland Drive, according to Stewart Granger's sour memoir recall. Andrew Marton had replaced Richard Thorpe as director, Marton having shown flair for location with King Solomon's Mines. The finished Green Fire was OK, if not inspired. No one expected a lot, so it was enough that action-seekers were pleased. Composer Miklos Rozsa was dismayed by Schary yes-men who told the boss how great Green Fire was at a studio screening. Well, in the context of kiss-and-punch star vehicles at MGM, it would more than do, but Rozsa was on to something for realizing that this kind of movie had not long to last in a fast-changing industry. Rentals reflected the lethargy: Green Fire, finished at $1.7 million negative cost, got only $1.8 million in domestic rentals. What saved it was foreign income, an excellent $3.1 million that sent overall profit to $1.1 million. Warner Instant is streaming Green Fire in wide and lovely HD, while Warner Archive offers it on DVD.