Martin West (Freckles), Carol Christensen (Chris), Jack Lambert (Duncan), Steven Peck (Jack Barbeau), Roy Barcroft (McLean), Lorna Thayer (Miss Cooper), Ken Curtis (Wessner), John Eldridge (Mr Cooper).
Director: ANDREW V. McLAGLEN. Screenplay: Harry Spalding. Based on the 1904 novel by Gene Stratton Porter. Photographed in CinemaScope and DeLuxe Color by Floyd Crosby. Film editor: Harry Gerstad. Music composed and conducted by Henry Vars. Song, "I Walked with the Wind" (sung by Jack Lambert), by "By" Dunham (lyrics) and Henry Vars (music). Make-up: Don Cash. Production manager and assistant director: Frank Parmenter. Sound recording: Jack Solomon. Producer: Harry Spalding. An API Production.
Copyright 1960 by Associated Producers, Inc. No recorded New York opening. U.S. release: September 1960. U.K. release: 11 December 1960. Australian release: July 1961. 7,604 feet. 84 minutes. Cut to 73 minutes in Australia.
SYNOPSIS: From the famous novel by Gene Stratton Porter, the screenplay follows the story line of "Freckles" and his adventures in the timber country with lumber barons, timber thieves and romance.
COMMENT: Freckles (Martin West), the husky, red-headed twenty-year- old orphan, who asks John McLean for a job in the McLean Lumber Company, is given one but reluctantly. He is inexperienced and handicapped (his left hand is missing). The job he is given is a heroic one guarding a 2,000 acre timber lease in a wild, isolated area, the Limberlost. His post is a cabin in the forest, with a horse and a rifle for company on his patrols on the lookout for the lumber thieves.
Freckles is inexperienced with a rifle and practices shooting, nearly winging a New York magazine editor, a salty spinster in her mid- forties whose hobby is nature photography. She asks him to find her niece and give her a message, and when he does so, he finds the niece, Chris (Carol Christensen) with a leg injury, being tended by Jack Barbeau (Steven Peck), a so-called "gentleman" outlaw and the leader of a group of experienced timber rustlers.
"Freckles" marks the movie debut of Martin West. He had previously appeared in the television series, "As the World Turns". He continued to act primarily in TV until 1990, making just a handful of pictures here and there.
This was the fourth film version of the Gene Stratton Porter novel, first adapted by Paramount in 1917, then re-made by RKO in 1928 and 1935. The authoress died in 1924 but her daughter, also known as Gene Stratton Porter, starred in the 1928 version, whilst another daughter, Jeanette Porter Meehan, wrote the titles. Her son-in-law Leo Meehan directed. The screenplay was penned by Dorothy Yost who performed a similar chore for the 1935 film starring Tom Brown which Edward Killy co-directed with supervising film editor William Hamilton.
In her lifetime, Porter was the world's most popular author. "Freckles" alone sold over two million copies. So did "A Girl of the Limberlost" (1909).
So what we have here is a slow-moving but beautifully photographed Limberlost drama, pleasingly acted and skilfully directed.
OTHER VIEWS: An amiable, mildly diverting drama... Though the film generates little suspense, performances are wholesome and attractive... The best things in the film are the vistas of rolling, rocky timber lands, caught so beautifully by Floyd Crosby's color CinemaScope camera. — Variety.
Director: ANDREW V. McLAGLEN. Screenplay: Harry Spalding. Based on the 1904 novel by Gene Stratton Porter. Photographed in CinemaScope and DeLuxe Color by Floyd Crosby. Film editor: Harry Gerstad. Music composed and conducted by Henry Vars. Song, "I Walked with the Wind" (sung by Jack Lambert), by "By" Dunham (lyrics) and Henry Vars (music). Make-up: Don Cash. Production manager and assistant director: Frank Parmenter. Sound recording: Jack Solomon. Producer: Harry Spalding. An API Production.
Copyright 1960 by Associated Producers, Inc. No recorded New York opening. U.S. release: September 1960. U.K. release: 11 December 1960. Australian release: July 1961. 7,604 feet. 84 minutes. Cut to 73 minutes in Australia.
SYNOPSIS: From the famous novel by Gene Stratton Porter, the screenplay follows the story line of "Freckles" and his adventures in the timber country with lumber barons, timber thieves and romance.
COMMENT: Freckles (Martin West), the husky, red-headed twenty-year- old orphan, who asks John McLean for a job in the McLean Lumber Company, is given one but reluctantly. He is inexperienced and handicapped (his left hand is missing). The job he is given is a heroic one guarding a 2,000 acre timber lease in a wild, isolated area, the Limberlost. His post is a cabin in the forest, with a horse and a rifle for company on his patrols on the lookout for the lumber thieves.
Freckles is inexperienced with a rifle and practices shooting, nearly winging a New York magazine editor, a salty spinster in her mid- forties whose hobby is nature photography. She asks him to find her niece and give her a message, and when he does so, he finds the niece, Chris (Carol Christensen) with a leg injury, being tended by Jack Barbeau (Steven Peck), a so-called "gentleman" outlaw and the leader of a group of experienced timber rustlers.
"Freckles" marks the movie debut of Martin West. He had previously appeared in the television series, "As the World Turns". He continued to act primarily in TV until 1990, making just a handful of pictures here and there.
This was the fourth film version of the Gene Stratton Porter novel, first adapted by Paramount in 1917, then re-made by RKO in 1928 and 1935. The authoress died in 1924 but her daughter, also known as Gene Stratton Porter, starred in the 1928 version, whilst another daughter, Jeanette Porter Meehan, wrote the titles. Her son-in-law Leo Meehan directed. The screenplay was penned by Dorothy Yost who performed a similar chore for the 1935 film starring Tom Brown which Edward Killy co-directed with supervising film editor William Hamilton.
In her lifetime, Porter was the world's most popular author. "Freckles" alone sold over two million copies. So did "A Girl of the Limberlost" (1909).
So what we have here is a slow-moving but beautifully photographed Limberlost drama, pleasingly acted and skilfully directed.
OTHER VIEWS: An amiable, mildly diverting drama... Though the film generates little suspense, performances are wholesome and attractive... The best things in the film are the vistas of rolling, rocky timber lands, caught so beautifully by Floyd Crosby's color CinemaScope camera. — Variety.