Gold of the Seven Saints

Roger Moore was just making a name for himself in Hollywood when he was cast in Gold of the Seven Saints (1961). The lean widescreen western was produced by Warner Bros. and the studio cast two of their contract players, both starring in Warner TV westerns, in the leading roles. Moore had just joined the cast of Maverick, rotating episodes with Jack Kelly as British cousin Beauregarde Maverick (James Garner had left the show after three seasons), and Clint Walker was the star of the long-running hit Western Cheyenne. The script, based on the novel Desert Guns by Steve Frazee, is built on a simple situation turned deadly. A pair of trappers stumble upon a fortune in gold nuggets and are packing it out of the desert--250 pounds of it--when their secret gets out and a deadly bandit pursues them with a gang of gunslingers. An irascible old gunfighter turned doctor and a Mexican caballero get caught up in the pursuit of the gold. Walker plays the senior member of the partnership, a veteran tracker who knows the ways of the desert, and Moore is the young, scrappy immigrant Shaun Garrett, playing the part with an Irish accent. Moore was a tall, strapping young actor but Walker dwarfed him at over six and a half feet. "Clint was a giant," remarked Moore in his autobiography My Word is My Bond. "He would curl enormous weights. Well, in fact, he'd just pick up cameras, and camera stands, and curl." Filling in the supporting roles are a collection of venerable character actors: Gene Evans (a favorite of maverick filmmaker Sam Fuller) as the outlaw McCracken; Robert Middleton, a veteran villain letting his hearty side out as the bigger-than-life caballero; and the great Chill Wills (famed as the voice of Francis the Talking Mule) as the wily old Doc who joins in with the trappers. Location scenes were filmed in and around Arches National Park in Moab, Utah, which features a landscape of unique geological formations that give the film a look that is at once desolate, alien, and beautiful. The desert heat was so dry that, according to Moore, the sweat evaporated before it hit the skin and the crew had to oil the costumes to mimic sweat. It was the third film that Moore made with Gordon Douglas, who hit it off with Moore during their first collaboration, The Miracle (1959), where Douglas handled the action scenes. Douglas broke into the business as a child actor before moving to the other side of the camera as a gag writer and director for Hal Roach. He worked his way from comedy shorts to B-movies to becoming a contract director at Warner Bros where he became reliable at westerns, crime movies, and action films. He also made the giant ant cult thriller Them! (1954). "Gold of the Seven Saints was a very happy film to shoot," recalled Moore in his biography. "I sang, I danced, and I played an Irish drunk. Fun to play, fun to do a dialect. I had a character to hide behind so I could act - though I've never been very guilty of doing that." It was also his last project for Warner Bros. The studio immediately tried to cast him in another TV series and Moore decided it was time to part ways. "I wouldn't have minded if they'd come up with something original," he later wrote, but he didn't like the direction his Hollywood career was going under Warner Bros. It was a sound decision. Moore landed the lead in the British series The Saint, which ran for seven years, and followed it by becoming the third James Bond in the hit film franchise, eventually starring in seven 007 films. Sources: My Word is My Bond, Roger Moore. Collins, 2008. AFI Catalog of Feature Films IMDb By Sean Axmaker