Treasure of the Golden Condor ** (1953, Cornel Wilde, Constance Smith, Finlay Currie, George Macready, Anne Bancroft, Fay Wray, Walter Hampden, Leo G Carroll) – Classic Movie Review 11,009

Writer-director Delmer Daves’s 1953 Technicolor adventure Treasure of the Golden Condor is 18th-century Latin American costume-drama nonsense with Cornel Wilde as a young Frenchman, Jean-Paul, swindled out of a fortune by his wicked uncle, the Marquis de St Malo (George Macready).

Jean-Paul is forced to live as a fugitive, joining adventurer MacDougal (Finlay Currie) and his daughter Clara (Constance Smith) on a buried-treasure hunt in Guatemala, until he can claim his rightful inheritance back from his evil uncle.

It is basically a remake of the superior Son of Fury (1942), but it has a good, capable cast and it looks lovely in Edward Cronjager’s superb Technicolor cinematography. Daves’s screenplay is based on the 1941 novel Benjamin Blake by Edison Marshall.

It is the first time Guatemala was used as a location for a major Hollywood movie.

Otto Preminger directed some retakes on the film.

Also in the cast are Anne Bancroft as Marie, the Comtesse de St Malo, Fay Wray as Annette, the Marquise de St Malo, Walter Hampden, Leo G Carroll, Konstantin Shayne, Louis Heminger, Tudor Owen, Gil Donaldson, and Ken Herman.

Treasure of the Golden Condor is directed by Delmer Daves, runs 93 minutes, is made and released by 20th Century Fox, is written by Delmer Daves, based on the novel Benjamin Blake by Edison Marshall, is shot in Technicolor by Edward Cronjager, is produced by Jules Buck and is scored by Sol Kaplan.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,009

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