Respectfully, iconic Golden Age actor John Wayne isn’t terribly funny. To be fair, he’s not not funny, but no one remembers the Duke for his comedic roles. Definitive Western cowboy hero? Sure, Wayne’s your guy. Western cowboy funny guy? Take your pick from Blazing Saddles. The man knew his limits, and largely stood within it. Its. Limits within its (always go for the rhyme, kids). But he did venture out of the Western genre from time to time, and even did the occasional comedy, with 1963’s McLintock! being one of his most notable. And one of his funniest is the underrated 1960 Western comedy North to Alaska, a romantic comedy in the spirit of Pretty Woman.
John Wayne Goes Looking for Love, for Someone Else, in ‘North to Alaska’
The film opens in 1900 Nome, Alaska, where brothers George (Stewart Granger) and Billy Pratt (Fabian) and Sam McCord (John Wayne) have literally struck gold, becoming rich overnight. With the money, Sam makes plans to go to Seattle and buy some mining equipment to bring back. Oddly enough, Seattle also happens to be where Jenny Lamont (Lilyan Chauvin), George’s fiancée (who he’s been corresponding with for three years but has never actually met), lives, so George asks Sam to bring her back with him. Sam agrees reluctantly, believing marriage to be foolishness, and sets off. Once in Seattle, he locates Jenny, but there’s a problem: Jenny’s already married to another man. So Sam does what any guy would do when faced with such an obstacle, and brings back prostitute Michelle “Angel” Bonnet (Capucine) as a substitute, showering her with the gifts George gave him to give to Jenny.
Unfortunately, Angel misunderstands Sam’s intentions, believing that she would be with Sam, not George. Sam offers her a return to Seattle, but Angel opts to stay in Nome until the next boat arrives, and goes to the local hotel. It turns out the hotel isn’t a great option, as she has history with Frankie Canon (Ernie Kovacs), the charlatan who now owns the hotel after winning it in a card game. She stages a fake fight as cover to get out of the hotel, and goes with Sam to where he and the Pratts live. Only Sam and George are called on to drive off claim jumpers at a neighbor’s, after which Sam tells George the whole story. Meanwhile, back at the homestead, 17-year-old Billy becomes smitten with Angel, and clumsily tries to impress her. When Sam and George arrive back, the comedy of errors begins when George realizes Sam and Angel love one another, and he comically attempts to get them to admit it.
Will they profess their feelings before it’s too late? Will Frankie be successful in swindling the claim out from under the Pratts and Sam? SPOILER: In the great tradition of romantic comedies, it all works out in the end.
‘North to Alaska’ Finds Its Comedy in Its Supporting Cast
Why North to Alaska works as well as it does as a comedy begins with Wayne’s willingness to have fun with his own public persona. In the film, Wayne is your typical Wayne, the no-nonsense, rugged hero, only an exaggeration: he’s not just in a bar fight, he’s in one where hats comically pop up and down with each punch, while the player-piano switches tunes every time it’s hit; he’s not just masculine, he’s masculine to the degree where he equates marriage to slavery; and he smiles, even laughs, a rarity in his far more serious roles. That self-deprecating humor and willingness allows the talented, and very funny, supporting cast to bounce the more comedic elements off of, and around, Wayne.
Kovacs was a groundbreaking comic genius, whose work influenced everything from Monty Python’s Flying Circus to Sesame Street, and his Frankie Canon is an unthreatening caricature of your melodrama villain, replete with the thin mustache. Granger milks the role of matchmaker for laughs almost effortlessly, and Fabian, just entering his teen heartthrob days, is serviceable as a love-struck teen in what was only his third film. But the real talent is Capucine. She has a deft comic touch, one seen more famously in 1963’s The Pink Panther, playing Simone Clouseau, the devious wife of Peter Sellers’ immortal Inspector Jacques Clouseau. Yet she also displays a real understanding of her character, giving Bonet tactile depth as she looks to put her life of prostitution as “Angle” behind her, returning to a normal life as “Michelle.” Is North to Alaska a groundbreaking comedy? No, but its Western-themed “Looney Tunes meets My Best Friend’s Wedding” vibe makes for a fun two hours.