Gunga Din (film)

George Stevens directed this adventure epic suggested by the Rudyard Kipling poem. Its screenplay was the brainchild of Joel Sayre, Fred Guiol, and the writing team of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur.

Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. star as eternally brawling British sergeants in colonial India, with Sam Jaffe as their faithful Indian water bearer, Gunga Din. Grant and McLaglen scheme to keep Fairbanks in the army after he's announced his intentions to retire and marry the lovely Emmy (Joan Fontaine) in a scenario curiously reminiscent of the earlier Hecht-MacArthur collaboration The Front Page. As the sergeants scheme to keep the trio together, they're tasked with quelling a revolution by a fanatical religious cult. To prove his worthiness to become the regiment's trumpeter, water bearer Gunga Din bravely comes to the rescue.

Gunga Din was added to the National Film Registry in 1999.


 * Adaptation Expansion: There's substantially more story here than there was in Kipling's poem.
 * City of Gold: Much of the action is propelled by a British soldier's greed for the gold topping a Hindu temple.
 * Jungle Opera: In part, what with the lost temple and all.
 * A Taste of the Lash: Sgt. Cutter gets a taste.