Thursday, February 7, 2013

THE SILVER HORDE (1930)

I was recently reading about Jean Arthur and I was surprised to find out that she and Joel McCrea starred together in, not one, but two movies before THE MORE THE MERRIER in 1943.  This was the first film and ADVENTURE IN MANHATTAN (1936) the second.  THE SILVER HORDE finds Joel McCrea as an average dude trying to make some money in the salmon business in order to earn some money and therefore be worthy of marrying rich girl Jean Arthur.  Yeah.  Anyway, Joel is in Alaska working his ass off while a rival love interest of Arthur is doing his best to upset McCrea's plans.  But then comes the big shocker...I hope you're ready for this...McCrea's main financial backer used to be a prostitute.  Gasp!!!  Maybe that was a little bit more shocking back in 1930.

As a piece of movie history THE SILVER HORDE is mildly interesting to classic movie nerds like myself.  It has a young Arthur and McCrea, a number of silent movie veterans and portions of it were actually filmed in Alaska, but that's really it.  If nothing in that last sentence grabbed your attention then you should probably just pass.