Blast from the Past: Gary Cooper Career Revisited
Lost Film
John Waters directed Beau Sabreur, a silent romantic adventure, starring Gary Cooper and Evelyn Brent.
Cooper plays a desert-bound member of the French Foreign Legion, who exposes a betrayer to the Legion.
He is then sent on a mission among the Arabs to conclude the signing of a crucial peace treaty
Due to the new technology, a sound version of the feature was also prepared. While the sound version has no audible dialog, it was released with synchronized musical score with sound effects using both the sound-on-disc and sound-on-film process.
It is based on the 1926 novel Beau Sabreur by P. C. Wren, who also wrote the 1924 novel Beau Geste (also made into a Gary Cooper movie).
Produced by Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation and distributed by Paramount, only a trailer exists today.
In the original novel, the lead character Major Henri de Beaujolais is an officer of spahis (Algerian colonial cavalry of the French Army) and has no connection with the Foreign Legion.
In all surviving stills of Beau Sabreur, Cooper is shown wearing the distinctive spahi uniform, but it is not clear whether the film was intended to be a Foreign Legion epic.
The sound version of the film contains a theme song entitled “Desert Stars,” composed by Edward Lockton and Frank Tours. A second song, “Thinking of You,” by Joseph Grey (words) and Allie Moore (music), was also featured on the soundtrack.
Beau Sabreur was filmed on location in Guadalupe, California, in Red Rock Canyon State Park in Cantil, California, and in Yuma, Arizona.
Cast
Gary Cooper as Major Henri de Beaujolais
Evelyn Brent as Mary Vanbrugh
Noah Beery as Sheikh El Hammel
William Powell as Becque
Roscoe Karns as Buddy
Mitchell Lewis as Suleman the Strong
Arnold Kent as Raoul de Redon
Raoul Paoli as Dufour
Joan Standing as Maudie
Frank Reicher as General de Beaujolais
Oscar Smith as Djikki
