Allegheny Uprising (1939)

Directed by

William A. Seiter

Genre

western, action, adventure, history

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 21m

Rated

NR

Rating

5.9 of 10 from 32 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

In colonial America, a frontiersman named James Smith leads a group of settlers in resisting British authority after a conflict with native tribes. He works to stop the British from selling guns to the local Indians. John Wayne plays the frontiersman who takes on a rebellion against unfair rule.

stirringpatrioticaction-filledold-fashionedearnestromanticadventurouslight-hearted

What happens

Allegheny Uprising (released in the UK as The First Rebel) is a 1939 American Adventure Western film directed by William A. Seiter and starring Claire Trevor and John Wayne. Based on the 1937 novel The First Rebel by Neil H. Swanson, with a screenplay by the film's producer, P. J. Wolfson, the film is loosely based on the historical event known as the Black Boys Rebellion, which took place in 1765 after the conclusion of the French and Indian War. It was produced by RKO Pictures. Clad in buckskin and a coonskin cap (as he would be a decade later in The Fighting Kentuckian), Wayne plays real-life James Smith, an American coping with British rule in colonial America. The supporting cast includes Brian Donlevy, George Sanders and Chill Wills. Claire Trevor and John Wayne also headed the cast of John Ford's Stagecoach the same year, and in both films as well as Dark Command the following year, Trevor is top-billed over Wayne due to her greater name value at the time. The film did not fare well in its initial release. The superficially similar John Ford film Drums Along the Mohawk had been released only one week prior. In the United Kingdom, where the film kept the original title, it was initially banned by the Ministry of Information for placing the British, already at war against Nazi Germany, in a bad light. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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