Valley of the Giants

SO many big names in this one -- 28 year old Claire Trevor, Frank McHugh, Charles Bickford, and the amazing Alan Hale. Really interesting (to me) that they were realizing how important the redwoods were, back in 1902, or at least making a film about it in 1938. Not many people cared about conservation and saving resources back then. The actual Redwood National Park wasn't actually established until 1968! According to wikipedia, they first tried to establish a park in 1911, but it didn't take. If you read the opening title cards, you'll know the plot... all about the timber barons trying to cut down the redwoods, many of which were on private property, or on homesteaded land. And all in glorious Technicolor, a year before Wizard of Oz. That explains why everyone's hair is dyed henna red... so it'll show up nice and red! and the fun Jerry Colonna singing songs. Wayne Morris is "Cardigan", the big land-owner here, trying to protect his land from the cutters. Morris was a decorated war hero, but died quite young at 45. It's a pretty good film. With some history thrown in.

This overproduced Big Trees Epic from Warners in 1938 is given the full production treatment: Technicolor, script by Seton Miller and a cast so immense that Charles Bickford is placed near the bottom of the on-screen cast list. But the actor at the center of this epic is Wayne Morris, who was a reasonably capable actor whose specialty was the Naive Young Stiff.... and a role like this calls for a sense of power and confidence that he does not not show in this role.

As for the other actors, the pleasures of watching them is muted. Charles Bickford is given a limited range of emotion: he runs the gamut from greedy to mean and back again. Claire Trevor plays her usual hooker with a heart of gold, and the other actors, given their fourteen seconds of screen time each, cannot do much. Given my general level of irritation even the Technicolor winds up annoying me: the working loggers always seem to be wearing fresh-laundered, crisply maintained clothes.

Director William Keighley was an effective director for the fast-moving Warner Bs, but he always seemed out of depth in these super-production. Look at stuff like BULLETS OR BALLOTS or the crisply turned farce of BROTHER RAT, not this.

While an undistinguished piece of filmmaking, "Valley of the Giants" dovetails nicely with Warner Bros.' often cited theme of Resistance to Tyranny and Struggle for Justice, so often seen in films as diverse as "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang," "The Adventures of Robin Hood," "The Life of Emile Zola" and "Confessions of a Nazi Spy," the unusual subject here being ecological devastation (also visited the year before in Warners' first all-three-strip Technicolor feature, "Gold is Where You Find It.").

Interestingly, fourteen years later, when the studio remade the story as "The Big Trees," the original film's villain, Fallon ("Steve Fallon" in "Valley of the Giants." "Jim Fallon" in "The Big Trees") became the protagonist, tailored for the talents of Kirk Douglas, whose peerless aptitude for essaying misguided heels was already well established by the early 1950's.

It should also be noted that character actor Harry Cording, a mainstay at Warner Bros. in the 1930's and '40's, appears in both versions. The Hale family are also represented in both films: Warners contact player Alan Hale ("Ox Smith") appears in "Valley of the Giants," while his son, Alan, jr plays "Tiny" in "The Big Trees."

Out of the two dozen films I watched this past weekend, this was the one I enjoyed the most. It is early technicolor and seeing the magnificent redwood trees was great. Wayne Morris delivers in the role of the timberman who has 21st century conservation values of not cutting too much and reforestation. Bickford is okay as the greedy villain. Claire Trevor is in cohoots with Bickford at the beginning but switches sides near the end. Alan Hale is a joy in his role as Ox and a real scene stealer. I believe I caught my favorite - Clem Bevans - in just a few seconds of screen time and Jerry Colona was a saloon singer extraordinaire. Other familiar character actors included Russell Simpson, Frank McHugh, Donald Crisp, and John Litel. This film is a treasure trove of character actors.

While this film is set among the Coastal Redwoods and isn't a western, the plot is pretty much what you'd see in thousands of B-westerns. After all, the most familiar plot in these Bs is the evil boss who wants to force everyone off their land. Here in "Valley of the Gods", the exact same situation occurs...though instead of being over grazing land or gold mines, the thief is trying to take the land for its bounty in redwood lumber.

When the story begins, Fallon (Charles Bickford) is having a meeting with his slimey cronies. It seems he has a scheme to steal the land from some redwoods loggers, as the wood sells for many times that of other types of lumber. He also enlists the aid of Lee (Claire Trevor) to accompany him and set up her gambling joint in the Northern California forrests.

Most of the land Fallon intends to steal is owned by Bill Cardigan (Wayne Morris) and at first Cardigan believes the law will protect him and the other loggers. However, it's obvious Fallon is willing to bribe his way to the ownership of everything...and eventually this means open warfare between them.

If any of this seems familiar apart from the 108,390,284 westerns with this theme, "Valley of the Giants" was also made and remade many times and portions of the movie were even spliced into other films. Frankly, if you've seen one of them, there isn't a lot of need to see the others.

So is this any good? Yes, though as I've said already VERY familiar. The actors are generally good (though Morris isn't as tough as some other actors might have been in this role), the action and stunts, pretty amazing. Worth seeing...but far from a must-see.