Previously filmed in 1929, Philip MacDonald's novel Patrol was lensed by director John Ford as The Lost Patrol in 1934. Sergeant Victor McLaglen is in charge of a World War I-era British cavalry regiment, stranded somewhere in the Mesopotamian desert. McLaglen hasn't asked for the responsibility: the commanding officer has been killed by an Arab sniper, leaving McLaglen to take over. One by one, McLaglen's men are picked off as they desperately fend off the enemy, waiting for reinforcements to arrive. The most spectacular death scene goes to Boris Karloff, playing a religious zealot who goes insane and begins marching towards the Arabs while bearing a makeshift cross. Max Steiner's relentless musical theme for The Lost Patrol would later be adapted into his score for Warner Bros' Casablanca. Lost Patrol would itself be adapted as the 1939 western Bad Lands. Originally running 74 minutes, Lost Patrol is now generally available only in its 69-minute reissue form. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide.

The Informer, Liam O'Flaherty's novel of the the Irish troubles of the early 1920s, was first filmed in England in 1929, with Cyril McLaglen in the lead. When director John Ford remade The Informer in 1935, the role of the tragic Irish roisterer Gypo Nolan went to Cyril's brother Victor McLaglen. The scene is Dublin, during the Sinn Fein rebellion. Gypo has tried to join the IRA, but has been bounced because he lacked full commitment to the cause. Gypo's best friend is Frankie McPhillip (Wallace Ford) a fugitive from the British Black and Tans with a price on his head. Hoping to start a new life with his streetwalker girlfriend Katie Madden (Margot Grahame), Gypo informs on Frankie, collecting the twenty-pound reward. Frankie is cornered and killed by the British troops; Gypo briefly suffers the pangs of conscience, but is too simple-minded to grasp the full impact of his betrayal. Suspecting that Gypo has turned in Frankie, IRA commander Gallegher (Preston Foster) orders his men to keep tabs on the big lout.

Gypo Nolan (Victor McLaglen) comes upon the distraught Katie Madden (Margot Grahame) on a Dublin street in this early scene from John Ford's The Informer, 1935.

The abstract then chilling opening sequence from The Informer, 1935, which won Academy Awards for Best Direction (John Ford), Best Actor (Victor McLaglen), screenplay (Dudley Nichols) and score (Max Steiner).

Rebel Frankie McPhillip (Wallace Ford) comes home to his mother (Una O'Connor) and sister (Heather Angel) and a trap laid by his friend Gypo Nolan (Victor McLaglen) in The Informer, 1935.

Sgt. Ballantine (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), Sgt. MacChesney (Victor McLaglen) and Sgt. Cutter (Cary Grant) are cornered by the enemy and forced to leap to safety in Gunga Din (1939), directed by George Stevens.

Sgt. Ballantine (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) tries to have a private moment with his fiancee Emmy (Joan Fontaine) while his fellow officers (Victor McLaglen, Cary Grant) observe in Gunga Din (1939), directed by George Stevens.

Victor McLaglen won a Best Actor Oscar playing an Irish rebel who sells out his friend in John Ford's The Informer (1935).

{+The Earl Carroll Vanities}, a popular Broadway revue of the 1930s and '40s, is the setting for this murder mystery interspersed with an assortment of variety acts, including Duke Ellington performing Ebony Rhapsody and a novelty number called Marijuana. Victor McLaglen stars as Bill Murdock, a detective investigating a series of murders during the opening night of a new edition of the {+Vanities}. When private detective Sadie Evans (Gail Patrick) is found murdered, Murdock must investigate between musical numbers to find the killer. When Rita Rose (Gertrude Michael) next turns up dead, Murdock concludes young ingenue Ann Ware (Kitty Carlisle) is the next person marked for death. Murdock has to find the murderer before the ending of the show or else he or she could disappear in the departing crowd of theatergoers. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide.

Though Rudyard Kipling's poem Gunga Din makes a swell recital piece, it cannot be said to have much of a plot. It's simply a crude cockney soldier's tribute to a native Indian water boy who remains at his job even after being mortally wounded. Hardly the sort of material upon which to build 118 minutes' worth of screen time-at least, it wasn't until RKO producer Pandro S. Berman decided to convert Gunga Din into an A-budgeted feature film. Now it became the tale of three eternally brawling British sergeants stationed in colonial India: Cutter (Cary Grant), McChesney (Victor McLaglen) and Ballantine (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.). Ballantine intends to break up the threesome by marrying lovely Emmy Stebbins (Joan Fontaine), while Cutter and McChesney begin hatching diabolical schemes to keep Ballantine in the army (if this plot element sounds a lot like something from the Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur play The Front Page, bear in mind that Hecht and McArthur shared writing credit on Gunga Din with Joel Sayre and Fr