| Wanderer of the Wasteland | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Irvin Willat |
| Produced by | Lucien Hubbard |
| Written by | George C. Hull Victor Irvin Zane Grey (novel) |
| Starring | Jack Holt Noah Beery Billie Dove |
| Cinematography | Arthur Ball |
| Distributed by | Paramount |
| Release date(s) | June 21, 1924 |
| Running time | 60 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | Silent film English intertitles |
Wanderer of the Wasteland (1924) is a silent Western film, and was the third feature film to be photographed entirely in Technicolor.
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Paramount Pictures decided to make a picture entirely in Technicolor following the success of the Technicolor sequences in the film The Ten Commandments (1923).[1]
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 now considered to be a lost film. 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.