Spawn of the North (1938)

Spawn of the North
Directed by Henry Hathaway
Written by Jules Furthman and Talbot Jennings; story by Barrett Willoughby
1938/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing; Universal Vault Series DVD

[box] Jackson: Yeah, here’s to the salmon. She lays two million eggs and nobody ever calls her mother.[/box]

This is an OK adventure film with some nice Alaskan backgrounds.

Jim (Henry Fonda) and Tyler (George Raft) have been friends since boyhood. Tyler returns from hunting seals in the Arctic and wants Jim to partner with him on the purchase of a schooner.  But while Tyler was away, Jim’s father died and he has taken over his salmon fishing business.  Jim and the other fisherman in Ketchican, Alaska are plagued by a Russian outfit headed by Red Skain (Akim Tamiroff) that steals salmon from their fish traps.  When Tyler can’t get money from his hotel-keeper girlfriend Nicky (Dorothy Lamour) either, he decides to cast in with Red and the salmon pirates.   Jim is caught between loyalty to Tyler or his fellow fishermen.  With Louise Platt as Jim’s girl and John Barrymore as her editor father.

This is a perfectly serviceable film.  Its scenes of glaciers breaking up and swamping boats were apparently ground-breaking for the time.  There is a good Dimitri Tiomkin score.

Technicians on Spawn of the North won an Honorary Academy Award for “outstanding achievements in creating special photographic and sound effects.”

Peter Cook included the film in his list of 50 Greatest Matte Paintings of All Time:  http://www.shadowlocked.com/201205272603/lists/the-fifty-greatest-matte-paintings-of-all-time.html

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