Wanderer of the Wasteland (film)

Infobox Film
name = Wanderer of the Wasteland (1924)


producer = Lucien Hubbard
director = Irvin Willat
writer = George C. Hull and Victor Irvin
based on the play by Zane Grey
starring = Jack Holt
Noah Beery and Billie Dove
cinematography = Arthur Ball
distributor = Paramount
released = June 21, 1924
runtime = 60 min.
language = Silent film
English intertitles
country = USA
imdb_id = 015467|

"Wanderer of the Wasteland" is a 1924 silent western film. It was the third feature to be photographed entirely in Technicolor. Paramount decided to make a picture entirely in Technicolor following the success of the Technicolor sequences in the film "The Ten Commandments" (1923). ["Los Angeles Times", January 23, 1924.] "Wanderer of the Wasteland" was based on Zane Grey's 1923 novel of two brothers, one an honest cowpoke, the other a gambler. When Adam Larey (Jack Holt) confronts his younger brother Guerd (James Mason) about his gambling addiction, the latter is accidentally shot. A distraught Adam, believing he has killed his own brother, flees into the desert. He later learns that Guerd was merely wounded and returns to the loving arms of beautiful Billie Dove.

The film is believed to be lost. A 35mm cemented bi-pack Technicolor print survived until the 1960s in the hands of Irvin Willat, who had directed the picture. Irvin Willat reported in 1971 that his print had decomposed and turned into jelly. After Willat's death, his daughter mentioned that she remembered the day when he had first discovered that "Wanderer of the Wasteland" had decomposed. She said he went upstairs to his bedroom, closed the door and cried for three hours. His former wife Billie Dove had starred in the picture, and he never really came to terms with their separation.

References

ee also

* List of lost films