The Redcoat and the Ranger: Screening Bilateral Friendship in Cecil B. DeMille's North West Mounted Police (1940)

Abstract

On October 21, 1940, world premiere of North West Mounted Police (JWMP) took place in Regina, Saskatchewan, with much fanfare. This epic western, which was producer/director Cecil B. DeMille's first foray into shooting entirely in Technicolor, stars Gary Cooper as Dusty Rivers, a Texas Ranger who crosses 49th parallel in pursuit of Jacques Corbeau (George Bancroft), a ruthless half-breed whiskey smuggler and gunrunner wanted for murder in Texas. (1) In process, Dusty helps North West Mounted Police (NWMP) suppress an uprising led by Corbeau. The story was inspired by 1885 North-West Rebellion: unsuccessful campaign on part of Metis community--mixed-race descendents of French (and some Scottish) male fur traders and Native (largely Cree, Chippewa, and Ojibwa) women--to defend diminishing buffalo hunting lands from Euro-Canadian encroachment into present-day Saskatchewan. However, DeMille intended picture to illustrate theme of friendship between United States and Canada through, in DeMille's words, the uniting of two men on border. (2) This essay argues that from NWMP's pre-production stages through its publicity campaign, DeMille used a distorted vision of North-West Rebellion to frame importance of bilateral amity in context of World War II period. Although United States remained ostensibly neutral in 1940, DeMille hoped that his film would reinforce notion that Canada was a strong and valuable nation--this, at a time when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his administration had endeavored to shore up continental defense system by strengthening hemispheric relationships. To that end, FDR administration designed Good Neighbor Policy to fortify bonds between United States and Latin American republics, particularly Mexico. Likewise, FDR regarded healthy cultural, political, and socioeconomic relations with Canada as vital to U.S. national security. The very public and politically expedient friendship between FDR and Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King personified strengthening ties between Canada and United States. Moreover, in summer of 1940, FDR and King agreed to a formal Canadian-American military alliance. (3) However, prior to Pearl Harbor, explicit war-related themes in U.S. motion pictures were uncommon due to that country's Production Code Administration (PCA), film industry's self-regulatory agency. Established in 1934, PCA enforced Production Code, a set of moral standards governing film content based on what constituted appropriate entertainment for an undifferentiated mass audience. According to Code, motion pictures were pure entertainment and not vehicles of social criticism. The Code thus included a Fair Treatment Clause that required films to portray impartially all foreign nations and their citizens. (4) Therefore, studios were leery of outwardly naming a country as hostile to United States, fearing that PCA would withhold its seal of approval and thus prevent film's exhibition. Nevertheless, as global crisis intensified, Hollywood increasingly released films with pro-interventionist, anti-fascist, or war-preparedness themes. (5) In NWMP, friendship between redcoat, as officers of North West Mounted Police were known, and ranger indirectly reveals DeMille's pro-ally sympathies and his fondness for Britain and its Dominions, especially Canada. Though a political supporter of Republican Party, DeMille backed FDR administration's efforts to guide United States away from isolationism and toward preparedness. DeMille later wrote in his autobiography, I never had any doubt, from outbreak of World War II, where America must and eventually would take her stand. In domestic policies, I felt that New Deal had done a certain amount of good and a great amount of harm; but in foreign policy, when Franklin D. …