Tripoli
Tags: historical fiction

Plot synopsis:
The USS Essex is maintaining a blockade of the port of Tripoli. General William Eaton (Herbert Heyes) comes on board to recruit a commando squad for a secret mission. Lt. Presley O'Bannon (John Payne) and Lt. Tripp (Lowell Gilmore) are selected for a raid on Derna, with the aid of native forces. Hamet Karamanly (Phillip Reed), former pasha of Derna supplies men in exchange for being restored to his throne. Countess Sheila D’Areneau (Maureen O'Hara) stays with the Pasha and everyone presumes she is his mistress, while she angles into persuading him to marry her. O'Bannon recruits a native force. O'Bannon and Countess D’Arneau meet and are attracted to each other, but both refuse to admit it to themselves.
Countess D’Arneau convinces Hamet that the USA plans to turn him over to his brother, but O’Bannon gets him to change his mind. Countess D’Arneau defies O’Bannon and accompanies the expedition, but he forces her to travel with the camp followers. After a waterhole is poisoned, the expedition has to cross a dune sea to reach the next waterhole ahead of the poisoners. O’Bannon kisses the Countess and the force has to endure a sandstorm. Hamet’s brother offers him a deal, half the kingdom in return for getting rid of the Americans. They reach the coast twelve days late and the navy is not there. There is almost a mutiny before the navy arrives. Hamet tells his brother the plan of attack on Derna. When the Countess learns of this, she rides to warn O’Bannon. He leads a surprise attack on the city and captures it. O’Bannon and the Countess become a couple.

Review: Entertaining and Solid; an Intelligent Script and Good Cast Plus Action Scenes.
This is a strongly-scripted and well-made adventure film, with solid stars in Maureen O'Hara, John Payne and Howard da Silva .
The story told herein is of a mission featuring a force of US marines sent to combat the 18005 activities of the "Barbary Pirates", North African corsairs who were stopping the ships of other nations and robbing them or worse.
The Marine's Hymn refers in the line "to the shores of Tripoli", to this same action.
Maureen O'Hara, lovely and talented as ever, plays a French countess inexplicably betrothed to a local bigwig; Da Silva is humorous and excellent as a Greek mercenary hired to help Payne's marines find and destroy the pirates and their stronghold.
Much of the film's footage concerns desert treks, during which the male-female conflict between Payne and O'Hara turns into something much more than mere instant dislike.
James Wong Howe did the cinematography, Winston Miller and Price the script, Yvonne Wood the costumes, Alfred Kegerris the sets and Howard Pine the action and second- unit footage, which is far-above average.
Those actors who contributed to this fast-moping and unusually-intelligent film included Philip Reed as the Countess's nefarious pursuer, Grant Withers, Connie Gilchrist, Alan Napier, Herbert Heyes, Lowell Gilmore, Grandon Rhodes and Rose Turich.
Favorite line: Greek da Silva modestly replying to US brass's thanks by saying, "Always glad to help a young country get started." A favorite film of mine, for several reasons; this is more than just a vehicle for the stars; it has dialogue, lovely scenic values and very good blocking, acting and overall production qualities..
I've seen this film a number of times on TV and caught it in the theaters over a half-century ago and loved it.
As a kid, it had great appeal to me and lots of action, fun and, of course, the lovely Maureen O'Hara, who was always worth the price of admission.
John Payne was an underused, underrated actor who always turned in solid, albeit low key, performance.
This film, which is a yarn based on the military action of the US Marines against the Tripoli pirates basically spins fight scenes between the bad guys and a coalition of good guys, including veteran character actor Howard Da Silva as a Greek mercenary.
The good guys win, of course and Payne gets the girl (but we knew that anyway, didn't we?) and this is a film that if it pops up on the late show (no video or DVD listed), is certainly worth checking out for some good, solid escapism..
In 1805 a force of U.S. Marines is sent to North Africa to put a stop to a collection of seagoing bandits known as the Barbary Pirates, who were preying on American and other nations' merchant vessels.
John Payne is the officer in charge of the expeditionary force, Maureen O'Hara a French countess and Howard Da Silva a Greek mercenary hired to help the Marines find and destroy the pirates.
Payne has always been an underrated actor, and it took several dark, gritty little thrillers with director Phil Karlson in the mid-'50s to show people what he was capable of.
O'Hara, aka the Queen of Technicolor, was married to director Will Price at the time, which explains why he got to direct this.
He only directed two other films, neither of them particularly good--in fact, one of them, "Rock, Rock, Rock" from 1957, was downright awful--and his direction here is workmanlike (action scenes are almost always shot by second-unit directors).
It's still an enjoyable little actioner, though; the Technicolor photography is good, and unlike many films of its type it doesn't come to a dead stop between action scenes (well, for the most part).
Maureen O'Hara and John Payne fighting each other again more than the war..
This is the realistic part of the film, and it is the more interesting for taking place in 1805 - the war in question is that against Napoleon, which is never mentioned.
Maureen O'Hara is a stranded countess courted by a local prince, John Payne runs into her by chance and gets trouble with her from the start, so it seems he just seeks her out to have someone to quarrel with.
Their quarrel and nagging goes on throughout the film until it's time for them to focus their interest on more important matters, like a navy which doesn't want to take orders from John Payne.
The military battle in the end is just the usual tearing down the whole city stone by stone after first demolishing the interiors of every palace worth some sight-seeing.
Howard de Silva saves the show as an intrepid Greek captain with a company of his own, and hardly anyone of the Americans would have survived without his contribution.
Although Tripoli is never reached, this film is the story of the US Marines hoisting the American flag for the first time over foreign soil at the port city of Derna in Libya.
Our capture of that city forced a negotiated peace on the Sultan of Tripoli and ended our war there which began against the Barbary States and the pirate ships they employed for plunder and ransom.Now how Maureen O'Hara as an exiled French countess in the court of the exiled Sultan figured in these events is something left to the writers of this film.
At least her flaming red hair was explained somewhat in this particular potboiler.In her memoirs O'Hara thought her casting in these films was as ridiculous as anyone else, but she thought that just keep working, take anything they give you and the better roles will eventually come.John Payne plays the real life Lieutenant O'Bannion who with his squad of US Marines led the land action while the Navy bombarded the guns guarding Derna from sea attack.
This flag waver of a film was an ironic twist in DaSilva's career, he went on the blacklist shortly afterward.Philip Reed is the exiled Sultan who lives pretty good for a guy in exile and he's the diplomatic catspaw the United States used.
In any event the Sultan of Tripoli stopped seizing our ships and that's what we wanted.What is an interesting if not often told tale of American history is reduced to the Saturday matinée kiddie potboiler of the pulp fiction variety.
This is a classic 1940s/50s lightweight action adventure piece, with all the classic elements: a historical tie-in, small-unit military action, horses, an expedition through a wilderness, a leading man in a classic romanticized leadership mold (here, a U.S. Marine), and of course the love story of two people who get the hots for each other but can't figure out what to do about it except circle and maybe even hiss at each other until a sudden dramatic kiss seals their engagement in the last five seconds of the film.
(There was also a certain amount of comic relief, centered in large part around a comic actor or two brought in just for that purpose, as Howard Da Silva, Connie Gilchrist, Grant Withers, and even Lowell Gilmore are here.) It's essentially a formula that was followed countless times during the period, and while the producers could move the setting to anywhere from Louisiana (see, e.g., THE FIGHTING KENTUCKIAN, John Wayne, 1949) to, well, the Shores of Tripoli, for variety, most of them were just westerns, usually set in the Southwestern United States.
And for Hollywood in those days, any classic romanticized villain would do, whether it was the Barbary pirates, the staid British Empire in the Battle of New Orleans, or even crooked home-grown American land speculators ready to cheat whoever had money and was handy.
As others have observed, the production values and especially the location shooting are excellent for the day, and if you like the late Maureen O'Hara (may she R.I.P.) and John Payne, so much the better.
What surprises me is how many of the reviewers on here seem to have no experience with this kind of thing and instead try to analyze it as if it were something made in a much more recent era.I might also add that until the modern (i.e., very modern) era of post-World-War-Two (that means, after 1945, less than 100 years ago) strife broke out in the middle east, there was no particular prejudice against or hatred for Moslems in America or Western Europe generally (at least not for several hundred years, at any rate), who were rather typically regarded as merely different, if not actually exotic or even fascinating.
Indeed, as another, especially clever reviewer of this movie on the IMDb suggested, Europeans thought enough of Arabs to adopt their system of numerals (i.e., 1,2,3,4,5, etc., not mention the whole concept of "zero") from them, along with algebra, averages, algorithms (for you computer junkies out there), the name of every star in the sky you could see without a telescope that was worth naming (e.g., Aldebaran, Altair, Deneb, Fomalhaut, etc., etc.) along with any number of words (alcohol, alchemy, admiral, alcove, alfalfa, albatross, azure .
) and certainly, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962), an extravaganza about an Englishman who practically tried to turn himself into an Arab during World War One would never have been the immense hit that it was only about 50 years ago.
(Unfortunately for theses propagandists, too many of us live in a fact-based world, and know that the .001% of the world's 1+ billion Moslems that are terrorists are only a minority of a minority of a minority at best), but then there are always the gullible, the fearful, the paranoid, the hateful, the low, the trashy, and the stupid who will believe anything in order to indulge their appetite for enjoying getting angry.) That kind of mentality had nothing to do with this movie when it came out in 1950..
That of course I am talking about the incredibly annoying character Countess D'Arneau played by Maureen O'Hara.
The character of the Countess D'Arneau seems like it was written for a different movie, or every other action was written for a different movie.
It is very possible to re-cut the film and take out every scene with Maureen O'Hara.
This would leave us with a dandy little historical war film (although short).
Obviously this left me very disappointed because there are so few films about the time and subject and when one is as good as this it gets ruined by Hollywoods need to put a leading lady into every film.Bottom line...
The audience gets jipped out of seeing an interesting film because Hollywood is too busy writing checks for unnecessary production values that cost the studio a small mint.See the oxen, camels, and fake palm trees as John Payne runs around trying not to look too embarrassed wearing his marching band hat.
Meanwhile, Maureen O'Hara does her spitting and grunting shtick as she scowls through the whole flick (as usual).
Mostly boring with few script directions.Hollywood put a lot of effort into these silly costume adventures because the producers are all deadheads with a penchant for wasting time and money..
kenneth roberts deserves credit as the author of a book made into two separate movies: (a) Lydia Baily a serious movie which explores the racial conflict in the haitian rebellion when Afro-French (Haitians) claimed the rights of Frenchmen to Liberte Egalite et Fraternite and (b) regrettably Tripoli, america's war with certain peoples of a near eastern background, the  radicals of their time belonging to a certain religious grouping.the movie is nerdy in its presentation of american fighting men confronting the culture of the exotic near east.
particularly the movie makes LT O'Bannon into a sexually repressed nerd, unable to speak in the presence of beveiled women.I gave this movie a six instead of the zero it deserves because the young american republic is so poorly represented in the cinema..
Neither one of them is very good, but they are quite different.Tripoli takes place in the early 1800s.
Pirates in Libya fight against the Marines, and the subsequent march through the desert and battle show audiences why the first line of the USMC theme song starts the way it does.
However, the movie is pretty boring, and without the forced romance between John and Maureen, it might have put me to sleep.
She starts the movie involved with Phillip Reed, and it's clear she has no real feelings for him but is only after his money and his title.
There's really no suspense, and it's no surprise that she falls for the first white guy she meets.Unless this part of history or battle in particular really interests you, find yourself another war movie.
This film dramatizes a significant historical event for the still young United States, in which the US Navy and marines, along with a small army of Egyptian Arabs and Greeks banded together for a combined assault on the Libyan port of Derma, in 1805.
This marked the virtual end of the first Barbary pirate war, in which North Africans were taking over American trade ships, taking the cargo and holding the crew as captives for ransom.Lt. O'Bannon(John Payne),"General" Eaton(Herbert Heyes) and exiled former pasha of Libya, Hamet Karamanly(Phillip Reed)retain their historic names.
French countess Sheila D'Arneau(Maureen O'Hara)is purely fictional, if a welcomed complication.The land forces did march about 600 miles through Egyptian and Libyan desert, although historically, they began at Alexandria instead of farther up the Nile, as portrayed.
Hamet is portrayed as accompanying the ragtag army, which provides an excuse for including dancing girls and the countess on the trip.
Before beginning the trip, there is an agreement that the Americans will back the reestablishment of Hamet as pasha, if he helps recruit mercenary Arabs for the army.
However, during the march, agents of his brother, Yusuf, the ruling pasha, infiltrate the army and bring an offer of sharing the rule of Libya 50-50,if Hamet will renege on the support of the Americans.
In turn, the countess learns of Hamet's treachery, and rides to warn O'Bannon.
In turn, O'Bannon warns the naval ships of Yusuf's move, by semaphore.
Later, after he sees the success of the attack, Hamet changes his mind again, and supports the Americans, whom he hopes will win him the entire kingdom of Libya.
Historically, although the Americans took Derma, Hamet never got reinstated.
The countess supported Hamet's politics, until he turned traitor to the Americans.
Through most of the film, she hated O'Bannon, who had insulted her a number of times.
The way he beat off the interfering Arabs outside and inside the palace reminded me of John Wayne at the Alamo, or Errol Flynn as Robin Hood: cartoonish.
Historically, it's reported that O'Bannon fought bravely.Incidentally, the Americans never did take Tripoli in this war, which is where Yusuf actually was.
Yusuf actually sent reinforcements to Derma, that arrived too late to prevent its fall, but these troops nearly recaptured the city.All in all, not a bad viewing experience, with a mix of negotiating, action, humor, and flag waving, in a reasonably historically accurate portrayal.
As expected, Maureen was a definite plus, both on her own, and in her confrontations with Payne.Available at YouTube..
President Jefferson decides to put a stop to it by barricading their port and sends a few naval ships and a detachment of US Marines to the shores of Tripoli.
John Payne is picked to lead the group.
Their uniforms are splashy enough to coagulate your eyeballs.So is Maureen O'Hara as the fiancée of the local sheik from whom Marine Lieutenant John Payne must recruit mercenaries to attack the outpost at Derne, overlooking Tripoli.
Her comic sidekick is Connie Gilchrest, whose haimische New York accent no one tried to fix, thank God. Lieutenant Payne has the requisite earthy sergeant, Grant Withers, but it's the Victor McLaughlin role and Grant Withers looks and acts like he's been holding hands with a bottle for the past thirty years.Maureen O'Hara, outstanding in a few movies, including "Our Man in Havana," overacts outrageously, but then the director appears to have ordered everyone to overact, so the obviousness assumes a style of its own.
If O'Hara is voicing an opinion that sounds suspicious and underhanded to Payne, he doesn't merely glance at her.
If it isn't John Wayne it's John Payne.O'Hara's figure is fictional, delightfully so, but Presley O'Bannon was real, and so was the commander of the detachment, William Eaton, whose title was Naval Agent to the Barbary States.
As in history, Payne hires a hundred or so mercenaries who turn out to be a mixed bag of Arabs and Greeks who don't like each other much.Situation report.
Half way through the movie, John Payne is leading this motley of Arabs, Greek mercenaries, and ten Marines across the sand dunes of north Africa, with the intention of deposing the miserable wretch who is pirating our ships in the Mediterranean.
Maureen O'Hara has her eyes on the wealthy Arab leader but Payne doesn't want her along and has forced her to travel with the "dancing girls." Payne and O'Hara hate each other but the discerning viewer knows how it will work out.
The model work and special effects are quite good too for the period.The ragtag army finally reaches the sea and gratefully draws supplies from the ships of the US Navy.
The plan is to bombard the fort at Derna into submission, then have Payne and his unit charge into the rubble and mop things up.
(They invented soap in the Middle Ages, but also algebra, an Arabic word, a dirty trick for which they can never be forgiven.) And here, just as the enemy seems about to lose Derna to the Marines, the Arabs break out thousands of hand grenades based on NUCLEAR FISSION and they blow Payne and his attackers to pieces, the disjecta membra thrown into the sea.
And when the Arabs are done ravishing Maureen O'Hara, and event that has left her incandescent with pleasure, she too is flung off a cliff to the waiting Kraken.