Trevor Howard Gets To Be Dashing Lead Man

Treasure Hunt On Location in The Golden Salamander (1950)

Archeologist Trevor Howard is as reluctant to meddle in North African smuggle-racket as was Humphrey Bogart in actioners made closer to home, The Golden Salamander departing from these for location its UK team hoped would lure a wider market. Variety thought it "too slow" to compete in a "sophisticated, competitive" US market, and maybe they had a point, for there was surfeit of similar yarns being done over here, most quicker-paced than this import distributed by Eagle-Lion Classics. Trevor Howard had momentum of Brief Encounter and lately The Third Man, the latter a mainstream hit, but he wasn't actionful by nature and less a right romantic partner for teenage Anouk Aimee in her first English-spoken part. Howard's role anticipates Alan Ladd in Boy On A Dolphin, the latter an all-but uncredited remake. Done before Brits began playing rougher with balled-fist subjects, Salamander is too much mannerly for a topic of murder and gun running, so domestic indifference was understandable, but how many of our melodramas travelled so far to tell such a familiar story?