Wanderer of the Wasteland (film)

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Wanderer of the Wasteland (1924)

Directed by	Irvin Willat
Produced by	Lucien Hubbard
Written by	George C. Hull and Victor Irvin based on the play by Zane Grey
Starring	Jack Holt Noah Beery and Billie Dove
Cinematography	Arthur Ball
Distributed by	Paramount
Release date(s)	June 21, 1924
Running time	60 min.
Country	United States
Language	Silent film English intertitles
IMDb profile

Wanderer of the Wasteland is a 1924 silent western film. It was the third feature to be photographed entirely in Technicolor. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times (January 23, 1924), Paramount decided to make a picture entirely in Technicolor following the success of the Technicolor sequences in the film The Ten Commandments (1923). Wanderer of the Wasteland was based on Zane Grey's 1923 novel of two brothers, one an honest cowpoke, the other a gambler. When Adam Larey (Jack Holt) confronts his younger brother Guerd (James Mason) about his gambling addiction, the latter is accidentally shot. A distraught Adam, believing he has killed his own brother, flees into the desert. He later learns that Guerd was merely wounded and returns to the loving arms of beautiful Billie Dove.

The film is believed to be lost. A 35mm cemented bi-pack Technicolor print survived until the 1960s in the hands of Irvin Willat, who had directed the picture. Irvin Willat reported in 1971 that his print had decomposed and turned into jelly. After Willat's death, his daughter mentioned that she remembered the day when he had first discovered that Wanderer of the Wasteland had decomposed. She said he went upstairs to his bedroom, closed the door and cried for three hours. His former wife Billie Dove had starred in the picture, and he never really came to terms with their separation.