Mogambo is excellent proof that remakes sometimes are better than the original, in this case Red Dust, released 51 years earlier in 1932, already featuring the classy mustache-bearing Clark Gable. However, in Mogambo, Kenya replaces Indochina, Asia having experienced a decrease in popularity, worsened by the success of the famous King Salomon’s Mines movie.

Africa: a new El Dorado for movies shot outside; a non-decadent greatness, the purity of the scenery, and a very well protected exoticism. A new frontier for the “civilized” White Man, the American and Asian frontiers having been tamed already quite a few years back.
And who could enhance the beauty of this new frontier better than a specialist in this domain? The aptly-named John Ford – specialist of wide, open spaces, Nature and Frontiers, king of Westerns, fan of Lincoln, obsessed with his Irish roots, 4-time winner of the Academy Award for Best Director and an anything-but-anonymous alcoholic.
Chosen by Sam Zimbalist, who found financing at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer-no-more as the latter was fired for spending too much time at the racetracks and not enough in the office.



The storyline: two women share, and fall in and out of love with a man with the savannah as a background: Clark Gable plays the sugar daddy, strong tempered and aging referee between both women.

Progesterone packed protagonists: Linda Nordley aka Grace Kelly as a woman married too soon to an anthropologist who most definitely was not down to party, versus Ava Gardner playing Eloise Kelly, a woman who did not wait for the 80s to become liberated.

Ava was liberated not only on screen but also in real life, the type of woman who never hesitated to speak her mind, even when in the middle of production, leading to her dropping such gems as “Well, there’s only ten pounds of Frank, but there’s 110 pounds of cock!” regarding her well-endowed husband, Frank Sinatra. Kinda puts a new spin on all the horse stories linked to the crooner.

Grace Kelly was the production’s second best choice, MGM first opted for Gene Tierney, beauty of all beauties and also talented as fuck. Unfortunately Tierney was taking a turn for the worst, her failing mental health was being treated with electroconvulsive therapy, leaving her brain as holey as Swiss cheese, not the best thing when your main activity is learning shit by heart.



Grace, who isn’t yet Monaco royalty, isn’t a particularly bad second choice: the blond/brunette opposition is always an easy on-screen sale, each one representing a caricatured image of occidental femininity: each one at a different end of the spectrum, a mirror for the female viewers who could identify to one or the other based on their personality/hair color combo. Choose your camp and choose your clichés.

The same goes for the viewer who is made to choose between the single man, seductive adventurer or the scholar one, already settled in his comfortable life.

Symmetrical construction of the characters at a time when the liberated woman and single man are featured more and more often on screen, but in a sugar-coated version, this is Hollywood remember, they don’t take mass education lightly.

Mogambo is one of the first Hollywood movies shot in an exotic location to understand the value of music in the construction of the film’s narration. MGM did ask Mischa Spolianslky to work on the soundtrack for King Salomon’s Mines, but Hollywood was stuck in its obsession with magnificent music, whatever the background to the story, or even the story itself.





Mogambo doesn’t feature any occidental music throughout the entire film, except for a brief song/piano interlude by Gardner interpreting Comin’ thro the rye. This interlude is the only non-tribal music in the film, a good way to make sure viewers would fully immerse into the storyline and movie.
To make sure they would feel exactly like the occidental khaki-wearing characters.
Khaki from head to toe, safari jacket or shirt over trousers in the same fabric.
And it took time for this specific look to be fully integrated into occidental fashion. What it took, actually, more importantly than time, was Ernest Hemingway, the globe-trotting/writer/badass who went on a safari in 1933 where he wrote his short-story The Snows of Kilimanjaro published in Esquire in 1936. Slowly but surely he will become associated to the safari jacket, which will become a shirt, and later a short-sleeved shirt, the same one sported by both male and female characters in Mogambo. This look finally gained recognition not overnight, but over the course of two movies and a bucket load of characters. All khaki everything for grandma, grandpa and even for toddlers. A civil version of The Bridge on the River Kwai. Same tropic, same fit, different situations.

Mogambo won’t leave you with a whistled tune rattling around in your brain for days, however it will burn the image of unforgettable sceneries into your retina and give you the sudden need to put on a safari shirt this summer to go hit on chicks.
Please don’t feel you have to grow Gable’s mustache too though.
Except if you’re already 60, in which case you can do what you want.
But don’t be surprised if we start calling you « sir ».