Credits

Studio: A Cecil B. DeMille Production
Paramount Pictures
Premiered: October 21, 1940 (Regina, Canada)

Featured Cast: Gary Cooper, Madeleine Carroll, Paulette Goddard, Robert Preston, Lynne Overman, Akim Tamiroff

Producer-director: Cecil B. DeMille
Screenwriters: Alan LeMay, Jesse Lasky Jr., C. Gardner Sullivan
Source: the Cecil and William C. de Mille play The Royal Mounted
Additional writers: Bartlett Cormack, Jeanie Macpherson, Stanley Raub, Clements Ripley, Frank Wead
Cinematographers: Victor Milner, W. Howard Greene
Art directors: Hans Dreier, Roland Anderson
Associate producer: William H. Pine
Assistant directors: Eddie Salven, Eric Stacey
Second-unit director: Arthur Rosson
Costumers: Joe De Yong, Natalie Visart
Music: Victor Young
Editor: Anne Bauchens

Theme

A native rebellion fomented by gun runners threatens the lives of both Canadian settlers and Mounties.

Production Quote

“Cecil B. DeMille has just brought in his first Technicolor feature, North West Mounted Police, nine days ahead of schedule and $125,000 under budget. DeMille split a $2,800 fund among twenty-eight workers as a result.”

– “Paramount’s Technicolor Specials,” Film Daily, May 20, 1940

Reviews

“Color and the screen long ago ceased to be strangers, but DeMille has lifted the visual element of his production to a new plane. Although he has used color to highlight certain passages, this is the first time he has employed the tints throughout. The results are highly gratifying. An interesting novelty is the introductory soundtrack talk by Cecil B. DeMille in which he recounts the historical basis for the film.”

– Weekly Variety, October 23, 1940

“All along we knew that Cecil B. DeMille and Technicolor were fated to meet; all along we expected that the result would be something to see. But barely did we anticipate anything quite as colossal as North West Mounted Police to emerge from that historic conjunction.”

– Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, November 7, 1940

Letters From Regional Theater Owners

“A young woman went into the Electric Theatre in Kansas City, Kansas, the other evening to see North West Mounted Police. After the show was over, she asked an usher to bring a flashlight to help her find bits of a $1 bill she said she had torn up while watching the picture. ‘I guess I just got too excited,’ she admitted.”

– James Cunningham, “Asides and Interludes,” Motion Picture Herald, January 18, 1941

“Broke all house records in five years of advanced sale prices. Raised ticket prices from 30c to 40c, but got no kicks. Lots of good comments.”

– C.P. Merwin, Diablo Theatre, Burlington, Washington, Motion Picture Herald, February 22, 1941

Artist Comment

“Three days before the premiere, Madeleine Carroll’s sister was killed in one of Hitler’s bombing raids on England; but Madeleine made the tour, charmed everyone, and showed in her own way as much pluck as was being shown by her stricken parents, who refused to leave England, and by the whole English populace. I have always been glad that North West Mounted Police appeared just when it did, to give American audiences a warm and true conception of the valor of the British Commonwealth and its peoples.”

– Cecil B. DeMille, Autobiography

Figures

There are no figures available for cost or earnings.