The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)

'The Lives of a Bengal Lancer'' is an adventure movie released in 1935, starring Gary Cooper, Franchot Tone and Richard Cromwell and directed by Henry Hathaway. The title comes from the 1930 autobiography of a British soldier Francis Yeats-Brown, but the storyline of the movie is very different and the film shares nothing with the source book, except the setting. Not even Yeats-Brown makes an appearance.

The film was well received by the critics and gained good box office results. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning Assistant Director, shared by Clem Beauchamp and Paul Wing, with other nominations including Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture.

The film grossed $1.5 million in worldwide theatrical rentals and helped to initiate a run of similar adventure tales, including The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), Another Dawn (1937), Gunga Din (1939), The Four Feathers (1939), and The Real Glory (1939).

Plot

The movie depicts a group of British cavalrymen and high-ranking officers desperately trying to defend their stronghold and headquarters at Bengal against the rebellious natives during the days of the British Raj.

Gary Cooper plays Lieutenant Alan McGregor, an experienced senior figure, overseeing Lieutenant John Forsythe, played by Franchot Tone. Their enemy is the rebel leader Mohammed Khan, played by Douglass Dumbrille. It is he who utters the immortal and often misquoted line, "We have ways to make men talk."

Production

The film was produced by Paramount Pictures who began planning and preparing for it in 1931, sending cinematographers to India for location shots. They had expected to release it in that same year but there was a serious deterioration of early location sequences due to the high temperatures. The finished movie was finally released in 1935 with the external filming taking place in Buffalo Flats in Malibu, Calif., and the Paramount Ranch in Agoura, Calif.

For Mogala, the mountain stronghold of Mohammed Khan, an elaborate set was created in the Iverson Gorge, part of the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, Calif. Some of the sets were taken and re-used in 'The Crusades' (1935) by Cecil B DeMille

Members of the Northern Paiute native American tribe were used as extras.

The director, Henry Hathaway, was chosen partly because he had lived in India for nine months. He remembered everything being white so insisted on that in the film. He was also highly regarded by Gary Cooper for his work on early Western movies.