The Law of the Range
- Tim McCoy: Jim Lockhart
- Joan Crawford: Betty Dallas
- Rex Lease: Solitaire Kid
The Law of the Range is an American silent film from 1928 with Tim McCoy and Joan Crawford. It was after Winners of the Wilderness from the previous year, the second collaboration between the two actors.
Action
Two brothers are separated at birth. While one, Jim Lockhart, a good man is to protect the poor, chooses the other under the name Kid Solitaire for the dark side of the Force. Both love Betty Dallas, which is repeatedly kidnapped in the course of the action of one of the brothers and freed from the other. In the end, see the two siblings and Solitaire Kid sacrifices his life for the love of Betty.
Background
Joan Crawford stood since 1925 at MGM under contract and rose rapidly to become a popular actress. A fixed type of role she had not yet found for themselves and so they played alternately main and supporting roles in a variety of genres. Since mid 1927, she was already well established as a leading lady next to the greatest male stars of the studio, so with John Gilbert in Twelve Miles Out, Lon Chaney in The Unknown and William Haines in Spring Fever.
However, their rapid ascent was the actress reckless and they overrate their actual power in the studio when she complained in late 1927 directly from Irving Thalberg on the preference of Norma Shearer. Crawford demanded starring roles for themselves and a higher salary. Thalberg rebuked the actress, forcing her despite her pulling power at the box office and its already relatively large fan base to accept a supporting role in a Western. With this targeted punishment Joan Crawford should be kept in mind that on their ascent basically just Thalberg would have to decide alone. However, things turned out differently, and mid-1928 it finally succeeded Crawford on their own by their appearance in Our Dancing Daughters, to get their name on the title. Crawford had played in the previous year on the side of Tim McCoy in Winners of the Wilderness together. Western were the bread - and - butter business for many studios as they were on the one hand extremely low cost and were turned quickly, however yielded on the other side a steady profit. Popular cowboy stars such as Tom Mix and William S. Hart appeared regularly on the list of 20 most bankable stars. MGM tried to make towards the end of 1920 from Tim McCoy also an established name, but with the advent of sound film, the management decided not to pursue the genre further.
Joan Crawford was in retrospect not particularly impressed by her performance and the film itself:
" " Range " was Tim McCoy film, I 'm just gone through, but in a respectful way, I guess. "
Theatrical Release
With production costs of only 52,000 U.S. dollars, it was a very cost effective for MGM production standards. However, the film was well above the value for the Western of the other studios. He played in the U.S. with a sum of 139,000 U.S. dollars higher than average for the genre value. With the foreign income of 102,000 dollars and a cumulative total profit of $ 241,000, the studio was able to realize a respectable income of 87,000 U.S. dollars at the end.
Reviews
Photoplay had warm words for Joan Crawford.
" Joan Crawford as a cute, home- baked girl triggers the protective instinct in both the good as well as the wicked one. "
Sources and literature used
- Roy Newquist (ed.): Conversations with Joan Crawford. Citadel Press, Secaucus, N. J. 1980, ISBN 0-8065-0720-9
- Lawrence J. Quirk: The Complete Films of Joan Crawford. Citadel Press, Secaucus, N. J. 1988, ISBN 0-8065-1078-1
- Alexander Walker: Joan Crawford. The Ultimate Star. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1983, ISBN 0-297-78216-9