Gunga Din
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Gunga Din (1892) is one of the most famous poems by Rudyard Kipling. Perhaps best known is its often-quoted last line, "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!" The poem is a rhyming narrative from the point of view of a British soldier, about a native water-bearer who saves his life. Like several other Kipling poems, it celebrates the virtues of a non-European while portraying a colonial infantryman's view of such people as being of a "lower order".
The film
The poem inspired a 1939 swashbuckler film about three British sergeants and their native water bearer who fight the Thuggee, a religious cult of ritualistic stranglers in colonial India. It stars Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Joan Fontaine, and Sam Jaffe in the title role. Originally, Grant and Fairbanks were assigned each other's role; Grant was to be the one leaving the army to marry Joan Fontaine's character, and Fairbanks the happy-go-lucky treasure hunter. Grant wanted to switch; the producers relented and the actors were more appropriately recast.After much spirited derring-do, all four of the main characters are captured by the Thuggees and forced to watch as an ambush is prepared for their regiment. Gunga Din manages to free himself, sounds the alarm using a bugle he has handy, and dies heroically.
The movie was written by Joel Sayre and Fred Guiol from a storyline by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, with uncredited contributions by Lester Cohen, John Colton, William Faulkner, Vincent Lawrence, Dudley Nichols and Anthony Veiller. It was directed by George Stevens. Filming began on June 24, 1938 and was completed on October 19, 1938. The film premiered in Los Angeles on January 24, 1939.
The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White. In 1999 the film was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
The movie includes a sequence at the end in which a fictionalised Rudyard Kipling, played by Reginald Sheffield, hears of the events and is inspired to write his poem (the scene in which the poem is first read out carefully quotes only those parts of the poem that tally with the events of the movie). Following objections from Kipling's family, the character was excised from some prints of the movie.
Influence
The film version was re-told (perhaps "parodied" would be a better word) in a 1962 tongue-in-cheek version reset in the American West and starring all of the members of the Rat Pack, entitled Sergeants Three, with Frank Sinatra in the McLaglen role, Dean Martin in the Grant role, Peter Lawford in the Fairbanks role, and Sammy Davis, Jr. in the Jaffe role."Gunga Din" is also the title of an apparently unrelated 1969 song by The Byrds, written by Gene Parsons.
Bob Dylan references "Gunga Din" in one version of his song, "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere"
The Gunga Din Highway is also a novel by Frank Chin, the polemical Chinese-American playwright and fiction writer who deals with themes of "authentic" Asian-American identity.
Gunga Din remains the favorite film of novelist and screenwriter William Goldman; his first novel, The Temple of Gold, is named after the location of the film's climax.
Many of the events and scenes from the second Indiana Jones film, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom are taken from Gunga Din, including casting an almost exact lookalike as the Thuggee leader.
The film is referenced by two Peter Sellers' films. In The Party, Sellers plays an Indian actor in the role of Gunga Din, and a parody of the film's climax has Sellers blowing his bugle to warn the British Army to such annoying effect, that his own troops start shooting at him; in Revenge of the Pink Panther, the mad genius Dreyfus quotes the priest's speech about mad military geniuses.
During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, journalist Dan Rather followed mujahdeen fighters dressed in local clothing, gaining him the nickname Gunga Dan.
In the graphic novel Watchmen, Gunga Din is referenced by a fictitious New York City fast-food chain, "Gunga Diner"
In an unaired episode of , the resolution of the plot is a parodied version of Gunga Din, possibly indirectly via the parallels with Indiana Jones. In a memorable part, the Thuggee leader is interrupted mid-sacrifice, prompting him to return the victim's severed heart, effectively resurrecting him, in a fit of anger at the mood being spoiled by interruption.
Gunga Din is referenced sarcastically, in a way, in a song called "Bastard"(song of a man who is no-good) by the band Supagroup. Saying: "I'm a direct descendant of Gunga Din. Got a mind built for evil and a body built for sin"
The name 'Gunga Din' is sarcastically used in the musical instrument world; brass instruments, particularly bugles, of low or questionable quality produced in India are often called 'Gunga Din' horns, as well as 'junkers,' or more appropriately, 'wall-hangers.'
'The Ballad of Gunga Din' was recorded by Jim Croce in 1966. The song appears on the Albums 'Facets' (1966) and 'The Faces I've Been' (1975).
Trivia
- The California Sierra doubled as the Khyber Pass for the story. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. reported in a featurette interview on the DVD release that in his travels, he has met several Indians who were convinced the external scenes were filmed on location in Northwest India at the actual Khyber Pass.
- The original script was composed largely of interiors and detailed life in the barracks. The decision was made to make the story a much larger adventure tale but the re-write process dragged on into principal shooting. Some of the incidental scenes that flesh out the story were filmed while the hundreds of extras were in the background being marshalled for larger takes.
- Sam Jaffe was a New Yorker.
- The character of Gunga Din is referenced in The Venture Brothers episode "Mid-Life Chrysalis", when one of the boys is polishing his brother's shoes while wearing a head wrap.
External links
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