00:08Hi there, I'm Ben Mankiewicz. Thanks for joining us on TCM for the back half of a double feature
00:13of adventure films starring Stuart Granger. We just had Granger opposite Grace Kelly in Green
00:18Fire from 1954. Up next, four years earlier, the London-born actor comes to Hollywood and
00:25becomes an international star. This is from MGM in 1950, King Solomon's Mines. Granger is Alan
00:32Quatermain, a rugged safari and hunting guide in Africa, disillusioned with his career, he's ready
00:39to call it quits. His co-star here, Deborah Carr, is the woman who convinces him to take on one
00:44final
00:45adventure to search for her husband, who's disappeared in unexplored jungles while looking
00:50for the legendary minds of King Solomon. The story was not new to audiences. The script came from an
00:571885 H. Ryder Haggard novel, a pioneering book in the lost world genre of fantasy and popular fiction.
01:04It later played a role in inspiring Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan novels and Rudyard Kipling's
01:11The Jungle Book. It also interested filmmakers. A silent adaptation of the book came in 1919,
01:17then a British version with sound in 1937, starring Paul Robeson and Cedric Hardwick.
01:24Granger, the lead in this version, had emerged as a movie star in England, but he was an unknown to
01:30just about everybody in the States. MGM took a risk bringing him over and then casting him,
01:37in King Solomon's Mines, a big-budget picture. The studio's risk paid off, the movie made a bundle,
01:43and Granger became a big Hollywood star. He also became an unusual star. In the intro to our last
01:51movie, I read a Granger quote given to the Los Angeles Times in 1981, where he said the thought
01:58of being a movie star never seemed to him to be a very worthwhile thing to be. When he spoke
02:05to the
02:05paper to promote his memoir, Sparks Fly Upward, he was refreshingly candid about his career and his
02:12money, which he had less of than he should have. Granger said many actors of his generation found
02:19themselves deeply in debt. Nowadays, he said, meaning 1981, an actor can tell a producer to get
02:26lost. We couldn't do that. The result was we made some bad pictures. Then Granger added with a dose of
02:34melancholy, I've never thought much of my movies. I trust he liked this one. It's from MGM in 1950,
02:43co-starring Deborah Carr, another British import, though Carr had already hit it big in the States,
02:49also with Richard Carlson. This is King Solomon's Mines.
02:53This is King Solomon's Mines.
