Directed by Armand Schaeffer, Colbert Clark Produced by Nat Levine
Written by Norman Hall, Colbert Clark, Ben Cohn, Wyndham Gittens
Starring: Jack Mulhall, Raymond Hatton, Francis X. Bushman Jr, John Wayne, Lon Chaney, Jr., Noah Beery, Jr.
Music by Lee Zahler
Edited by Ray Snyder
Distributed by Mascot Pictures
Release date: April 7, 1933
Country: United States
Plot
In the harsh deserts of Northern Africa, the French Foreign Legion provides a military presence. When Lt. Tom Wayne (John Wayne)) is framed for the murder of Armand Corday (Lon Chaney, Jr., the brother of his fiancé (Ruth Hall). He vows to capture the real killer, a mysterious Arab terrorist known only as El Shaitan.
Tom encounters three bumptious legionnaires: Clancy (Jack Mulhall), an Irishman always spoiling for a fight, Renard (Raymond Hatton}, a wily Frenchman and Schmidt (Francis X. Bushman, Jr.) a German who loves sausages). They are the surviving members of a Foreign Legion unit.
Nicknamed the "Devil of the Desert", El Shaitan remains a shadowy figure, hiding his face and his true identity, as a result of which many people are mistakenly suspected of being the cult leader, while other characters impersonate him for their own ends. At a meeting place called, "The Devil's Circle", El Shaitan commands a fanatic desert cult, a secret society formed to fight against the French authorities. Their raids
When Clancy, Renard and Schmidt are trapped by a horde of Berber tribesmen, using the machine gun mounted on his aircraft, Tom quickly stops the attack. The three legionnaires are in constant danger but Tom comes to their rescue many times, acting as a modern-day d'Artagnan. Eventually the trio, plus their new friend, triumph over their adversaries.
Cast
John Wayne as Tom Wayne
Ruth Hall as Elaine Corday
Jack Mulhall as Clancy
Raymond Hatton as Renard
Francis X. Bushman, Jr. (Ralph Bushman) as Schmidt
Noah Beery, Jr. as Stubbs
Al Ferguson as Ali, chief henchman
Hooper Atchley as El Kadur
George Magrill as El Maghreb
Edward Peil, Sr. as Ratkin
Gordon de Main as Colonel Duval
William Desmond as Captain Boncour
Robert Warwick as Colonel Brent
Creighton Chaney (Lon Chaney, Jr.; credited as Armand Corday)
Robert Frazer as Major Booth.
Production
The Three Musketeers was loosely adapted from the novel The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, père and updated to a contemporary time period. The Three Musketeers are legionnaires in the French Foreign Legion with a multi-cultural group: Clancy (Irish), Renard (French) and Schmidt (German). The d'Artagnan character is Tom Wayne, an American aviator played by John Wayne, who rescues the three from attacking Arabs while flying over the desert.
During the 1930s, after starring in The Big Trail (1930), its subsequent commercial failure meant that Wayne was relegated to minor roles in A-pictures, or starring, with his name over the title, in many low-budget Poverty Row Westerns, mostly at Monogram Pictures and serials for Mascot Pictures Corporation. Wayne would star in two other Mascot serials's The Shadow of the Eagle (1932) and The Hurricane Express (1932).
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