By Randal S. Brandt
Book: Plunder of the Sun, by David Dodge (1949)
Film: Plunder of the Sun—John Farrow (director), Jonathan Latimer (screenplay), 1953
Film: Plunder of the Sun—John Farrow (director), Jonathan Latimer (screenplay), 1953
In 1955, Paramount Pictures premiered Alfred Hitchcock’s glittering To Catch a Thief starring Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, shot in glorious Technicolor VistaVision on location in the South of France. The film was based on David Dodge’s 1952 same-titled novel and added his name to the relatively small club of well-respected authors (including John Buchan, Ethel Lina White, Daphne du Maurier, Cornell Woolrich, Patricia Highsmith, and Robert Bloch) whose work was adapted to the screen by the Master of Suspense and thereby assured his place in the annals of movie history.
But that was not David Dodge’s first Hollywood rodeo. Two years earlier, his novel Plunder of the Sun had been the source for a black-and-white
film noir directed by John Farrow, starring Glenn Ford, and with a screenplay by hard-boiled novelist/veteran screenwriter Jonathan Latimer.(Right) Plunder of the Sun, Random House, 1949. Art by H. Lawrence Hoffman.
The novel, Dodge’s second to feature expatriate American private investigator Al Colby, was published in 1949 and its story begins in a park in Santiago, Chile, where Colby reluctantly accepts a job from the mysterious invalid Señor Alfredo Berrien, who has a Peruvian “antique” that he wants smuggled back into Peru. Berrien, a well-known dealer in antiquities, expects to be thoroughly searched on both ends of the journey; as a supposed American tourist, Colby will have no such trouble. The job pays $1,000 and gives Colby an excuse to get to know Berrien’s attractive nurse, Ana Luz. Colby’s assignment is to carry the object aboard a ship sailing from Valparaíso, Chile, and return it to Berrien when they reach Callao, Peru.
After Berrien is found dead in his shipboard cabin, Colby discovers that the antique he’s been carrying is a quipu, an Inca message-cord, wrapped in three sheets of parchment covered with writing in Quechua. He goes on to consult a museum in Lima, as well as William H. Prescott’s The Conquest of Peru (1847) and an unscrupulous collector and translator in Arequipa, thereby learning that what he really has is a manuscript describing the location, near Cuzco, Peru, of 84 pieces of lost Inca treasure.
In his quest for the gold, Colby tangles with a couple of fellow Americans: Julie, a lonely young party girl who drinks too much and “paint[s] her mouth square at the corners, like a comic-strip glamour girl”; and Jefferson (Jeff), a rough, ruthless “sharp-shooter” who first tries to steal the manuscript, then proposes a partnership, and finally double-crosses Colby and hijacks the loot. The action climaxes with a chase across Lake Titicaca, in the Andes Mountains, as Jeff tries to make it to Bolivian waters in a small reed boat.
With the major exception of where its action takes place, a substantial amount of Dodge’s novel survives its cinematic adaptation. The character names and plot are basically the same, but for the screen Al Colby (Ford) becomes an insurance adjuster who takes the job of smuggling a small package into Mexico from Cuba. The opening scene finds Colby being held by Mexican authorities who are asking him to explain why a tourist has left “a trail of bodies throughout the country.” In a flashback, Colby then tells his story, starting out with him being broke and stranded in Havana (a situation Dodge’s Colby would have never allowed himself to be found in). One night he is picked up in a bar by the beautiful, sultry Anna Luz (Patricia Medina; with a slightly different spelling of “Ana” than Dodge chose). She takes him home, where he is persuaded by the wheelchair-bound Thomas Berrien (Francis L. Sullivan; renamed from “Alfredo” in the book) to accept $1,000 in exchange for carrying an unknown object on board a ship to Mexico and returning it to Berrien in Oaxaca. During the journey, he meets Jefferson (Sean McClory) and Julie Barnes (Diana Lynn), whose characters resemble—more or less—their counterparts in the novel. However, the artifact is now a carved jade disk wrapped in three pieces of parchment, and the treasure it leads to is a collection of priceless Zapotecan relics.
(Above) The original trailer for 1953’s Plunder of the Sun.
Some scenes and lines of dialogue make it almost straight from the book into the movie. One of the best is a scene in which a very drunk, heavily made-up Julie tries to get Colby to spend the night with her. “You think I’m a tramp, don’t you?” she says in the book. “Everybody thinks I’m a tramp, just because I like to have fun.” Colby is not interested. He’s much more concerned with deciphering the treasure map. In order to get rid of Julie and stop her from causing a ruckus, he agrees to go with her to her room. But, instead of succumbing to her charms, Colby forces her to look at herself in a mirror. She says:
“Kiss me, mys’ry man.”The big-screen version is markedly similar. “Kiss me, mystery man,” Diana Lynn purrs and starts taking off her jewelry, clearly implying that her dress will be next. “Come here,” replies Glenn Ford, then grabs her arm and jerks her around to face herself in the mirror. “Take a good look at yourself. Who’d want to kiss that?” In both the book and the film, the fallout from this scene is the same. First, Julie gets her revenge by betraying Colby to a local antiquities expert (Naharro in the novel; Navarro in the film), but then later regrets her actions and comes over to his side. She also stops drinking. “I haven’t had a drink since [the mirror incident],” she says. “Not one.”
“Open your eyes.”
They opened. I took her by the shoulders and turned her around so that she was facing the mirror of the peinador.
It was a big mirror, nearly full length, and it gave her a good view—smeared lipstick, smeared mascara, cockeyed hat, loose mouth, glassy eyes, rumpled clothes, everything. She rocked there for seconds, looking stupidly at herself.
“Who wants to kiss that?” I said.
One of the most striking things about the 1953 picture is its location filming in Mexico. It would have been more exotic to keep the novel’s Peruvian setting, but the moviemakers made the most of their Mexican locale with dramatic scenes shot amidst the archaeological ruins of Oaxaca’s Mitla and Monte Albán, as Colby explores the ancient pyramids and temples, and some of the history of Mexico’s ancient civilizations described in the film might actually be true. Other scenes were also shot in Oaxaca, as well as in Veracruz, Mexico, and at the Churubusco-Azteca Studios in Mexico City. Throughout the film, the cinematography is top-notch.
(Left) Plunder of the Sun, Dell Books edition, 1951, with a cover illustration by Robert Stanley. (Right) The 2005 Hard Case Crime edition, featuring art by Robert McGinnis.David Dodge considered Plunder of the Sun one of his best novels. It is also one of his most reprinted works (most recently in 2005 as part of Charles Ardai’s Hard Case Crime line), so it seems that many publishers and readers agree with him. Although the filmmakers followed the blueprint laid out in the book, the rich and complex characters that Dodge created get watered down in Jonathan Latimer’s script, sometimes to the point that the viewer is not even sure why they’re included in the finished product. While Glenn Ford is well-cast, and plays Colby with the same toughness that Dodge imbued in him, the screenplay makes him much more of a brute towards women than anything Dodge wrote over the course of three novels.
At times, the film also seems to be trying a little too hard to channel The Maltese Falcon—during his first meeting with Colby, one almost expects to hear Señor Berrien tell him how much he likes talking to a man who likes to talk. The trailer’s intertitles even make explicit connections between the two: “Not since ‘The Maltese Falcon’ … has a novel probed so deeply into the realm of intrigue … has the screen swept you past such mystic barriers!” Mystic barriers?
When Hollywood took notice of his book, Dodge was understandably excited. There had been interest earlier in adapting It Ain’t Hay (1946), his last of four novels starring San Francisco tax accountant Whit Whitney, but with that tale’s plot focused so heavily on narcotics trafficking, Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration (PCA) refused to approve it for a screen treatment.
Then an aspiring independent producer named Paul Fix (a veteran character actor with a lengthy career in films and television, who had a long-running association with John Wayne, appearing with him in 27 motion pictures) came along with an offer of $4,000 for the film rights to Plunder of the Sun, and Dodge accepted, even though he and his agents considered that amount low. At the time, David Dodge, his wife Elva, and their daughter Kendal were running out of cash in South America, and the promise of this windfall, even if modest (“I’ll hold out for more next time,” the author wrote to his agent), gave them the boost they needed to make plans for their next stop, France. At this same time, Paramount offered Dodge a seven-year contract to work as a screenwriter himself—but he turned it down. “About Hollywood, definitely no,” he remarked. “Seven years is too long. I wouldn’t live that long, in Hollywood.”In his humorous travel book, 20,000 Leagues Behind the 8 Ball (1951), David Dodge tells part of the story:
Best of all, I got a short, businesslike note from my agent which, without flattering me more than usual, told me that some piker had offered four thousand dollars for the television and related rights to something I had written and forgotten about, an amount which the agent thought such small potatoes in view of the tremendous potentialities of the television field that he hardly considered it worthwhile mentioning the offer before declining it in my best interests, and if he did not hear from me promptly to the contrary, he would reject the offer with the scorn it deserved.The Dodges had just arrived in France when they received word that the film deal for Plunder was dead (and it was a film deal, not a television deal, despite Dodge’s later recollection in print). His agents had signed the contract in good faith and they considered taking legal action against Fix. But, since Fix never signed his side of the contract, they had little legal recourse, and ultimately dropped the matter. (According to the Internet Movie Database [IMDb], Fix has no producing credits to his name; this may have been his one and only attempt to break into that side of the business.)
The submarine cable between Valparaíso and New York was sending up bubbles before the operator finished transmitting the wire I got off. Four thousand dollars, when you need it, looks like four million. I knew the money would not be forthcoming immediately, because contracts have to be drawn up, scribbled over, revised, reworded, rehashed, and finally signed before you get your hands on any cash, but the news blew away a number of dark clouds on the distant horizon.
When another offer for film rights came in later that same month, they took it, even though it was for a firm $2,500. This time the buyer was crime writer Jonathan Latimer (Headed for a Hearse, Solomon’s Vineyard), and after negotiations were completed—much as Dodge later described them—the contracts were signed in July 1950.
Unlike It Ain’t Hay, the screen treatment of Plunder of the Sun had a relatively easy time meeting the demands of the Production Code. After the screenplay’s first version was submitted in June 1952, Breen expressed several objections to small bits of dialogue and some of the action. His main directives, though, were to urge the producers to exercise “the greatest possible care in the selection and photographing of the costumes and dresses for your women. The Production Code makes it mandatory that the intimate parts of the body—specifically, the breasts of women—be fully covered at all times.” (Perhaps Colby got even rougher with young Julie in the initial treatment than was depicted in the final film?) Breen also insisted that revisions be made “to properly portray law and order in Mexico,” as the screenplay offered “an unfair portrayal of Mexican law-enforcement officials.” A revised screenplay was submitted a few months later, together with a note from the producers saying, “this version of the script has the approval of the Mexican government.” Breen gave it the go-ahead with a request for only two additional minor changes, and final PCA approval was granted on April 17, 1953.
David, Kendal, and Elva Dodge, circa 1950.When all was said and done, Plunder of the Sun premiered on August 19, 1953. It was the second feature produced by John Wayne and Robert Fellows under their recent partnership as Wayne-Fellows Productions. Glenn Ford was ably cast in the lead role as Al Colby. Rhonda Fleming had originally been considered to play Anna Luz (which would have reunited the stars of 1951’s The Redhead and the Cowboy, also scripted by Latimer), but a horse-riding accident that Ford suffered on the set of his previous movie, The Man from the Alamo, delayed work on Plunder of the Sun. By the time everyone was finally ready for the cameras to start rolling, Fleming was no longer available and Patricia Medina was cast instead.
Dodge was disappointed with Hollywood’s rendering of his story, considering it a “low-budget, very poor picture,” and in a letter to his agent, he quoted a Variety review that said the film “did not do justice to the book.” The author was particularly peeved by Medina’s performance as Anna, referring to her (his daughter later recalled) as the “female Alan Ladd”—apparently, Dodge was no fan of Ladd, either.
Luckily for David Dodge, Grace and Cary and Hitch were waiting in the wings, ready to make a bolder, even if less faithful to the source material, rendition of his first novel set in Europe.
(Author’s note: The research necessary to compose this article was supported, in part, by a Research Grant from the Librarians Association of the University of California).
SOURCES
“Dodge, David,” Curtis Brown Ltd. Records, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library.
Dodge, David. Plunder of the Sun. Random House, 1949.
Dodge, David. 20,000 Leagues Behind the 8 Ball. Random House, 1951.
Ford, Peter. Glenn Ford: A Life. University of Wisconsin Press, 2011.
“Plunder of the Sun,” Internet Movie Database (IMDb), accessed July 28, 2025. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046196/
“Plunder of the Sun,” Motion Picture Association of America Production Code Administration Records, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
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