Fighting Caravans - 1931 Gary Gooper

1931 pre-Code Western film directed by Otto Brower and David Burton and starring Gary Cooper, Lili Damita, and Ernest Torrence. Based on the 1929 novel Fighting Caravans by Zane Grey, the film is about a frontier scout who helps guide a wagon train across untamed country, fighting off wild Indians and schemy traders, (or is that schemy Indians and wild traders?) All the while his two crusty companions (“crusty” because they haven’t bathed since they were babies and it was forced upon them) try to save him from the evil and degraded state of falling in love. Despite being billed as “based on the Zane Grey novel”, the film and the book have little in common except the title. What else is new?