Trivia and Other Fun Stuff on MOGAMBO

Gable regained his box-office luster with Mogambo (1953) after three years of diminishing returns. It also re-established him as a romantic lead despite the fact that he was in his 50s. The film's success put him in position to create his own production company. Ironically, studio executives had been considering dropping his contract until Mogambo and his next film, Betrayed (1954), scored at the box office. Instead, it was Gable who dumped them.

Mogambo was only Clark Gable's third film in color. The first two were Gone with the Wind (1939) and Across the Wide Missouri (1951).

The film's title is Swahili for "big gorilla," though MGM publicists claimed it meant "passion."

Biographers have suggested that director John Ford originally planned to cast his brother Francis Ford as Captain John. When he died a few months before production began, Ford cast Laurence Naismith instead. Mogambo was one of the few film's Ford made in which he did not fill several roles with the group of actors who followed him from film to film. The only member of the "John Ford Stock Company" in the picture was Denis O'Dea, who played the priest.

To guarantee that his cast have believable tans, Ford ordered them all to spend two weeks in the sun. That proved to be too long, and the crew had to use makeup to lighten their skin.

The first day of shooting was disrupted by a large baboon that kept getting into camera range to watch Gable and Ava Gardner film a love scene.

When the casting director told Ford that British actor Donald Sinden, cast as Grace Kelly's husband, was very serious about his work, Ford promised, "We'll soon knock the hell out of that" (Quoted in Scott Eyman, Print the Legend). Throughout the shoot he picked on the English actor, blaming him personally for all the problems of the Irish people.

After each day's location shooting, Gardner bathed in a canvas tub set up and filled by the native boy assigned to her. When the British colonial government complained about her appearing naked before the natives while bathing, she laughed, threw off her clothes and paraded naked through the camp.

During the location shoot, Gardner and Sinatra celebrated their first wedding anniversary. As a gift, he presented her with a ring, but since he was broke at the time, she also got the bill for it later.

When the film was released in Spain, the censors there found the adulterous relationship between Gable and Kelly too shocking, so in the dubbing Kelly and her on-screen husband became brother and sister - involved in an incestuous relationship!!

by Frank Miller

Famous Quotes from MOGAMBO

"That playgirl stuff, Brownie. I've seen 'em in London, Paris, Rome. They start life in a New York nightclub and end up covering the world like a paint advertisement. Not an honest feeling from her kneecap to her neck." -- Clark Gable, as Victor Marswell, assessing Ava Gardner, as Eloise Kelly, to Philip Stainton, as John Brown-Pryce

"Look, Buster, don't you get over-stimulated with me!" -- Gardner, as Eloise Kelly

"Everything snarls around this joint!" - Gardner, as Eloise

"You and nobody else is going to wring me out and hang me up to dry again." -- Gardner

"Remember, I came here to be your friend. For your sake. And I'm keeping the offer open.... It'll be rugged, but I'll keep it open." -- Gardner, offering her friendship to Grace Kelly, as Linda Nordley

"This is no Sir Galahad who loves from afar. This is a two-legged boa constrictor." -- Gardner, trying to warn Kelly, as Linda Nordley, about Gable, as Victor Marswell

"I make my contribution to this mixed-up community they call the world." -- Gable, as Victor

"The only lions I ever want to see again are in front of the public library." -- Gardner

Compiled by Frank Miller