As Boy's Own Adventures go "Beau Geste" is up there with the best of them. There have been a number of film and television versions including a silent one in 1926 with Ronald Colman as Beau, a mediocre version in 1966 and even a spoof version with Marty Feldman but the most famous version was this 1939 movie directed by William Wellman and starring Gary Cooper as Beau with Ray Milland and Robert Preston as his brothers and Brian Donleavy, Oscar-nominated as the sadistic Sergeant Markov. Milland's love interest was a very young and very beautiful Susan Hayward.
It's a tale of the Foreign Legion and at the heart of it is a mystery involving a stolen sapphire known as the Blue Water which all three Geste brothers claim to have stolen. The theft, of course, is central to the plot but the solving of the mystery as to who stole it doesn't hold up the action. It's a more serious picture than George Stevens' "Gunga Din", which also came out in '39, and is even more exciting. Cooper is the perfect hero and the superb supporting cast includes Albert Dekker, Broderick Crawford and J. Carrol Naish. A delightful, if far-fetched, treat.
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