SAHARA

Columbia, 1943.  Directed by Zoltan Korda.  Camera:  Rudolph Maté.  With Humphrey Bogart, Bruce Bennett, J. Carroll Naish, Lloyd Bridges, Rex Ingram, Richard Nugent, Dan Duryea, Carl Harbord, Patrick O'Moore, Louis Mercier, Guy Kingsford, Kurt Krueger, John Wengraf, Hans Schumm.

Click for larger image

Click for larger image

After the fall of Tobruk, an American tank crew attached to the British Eighth Army is cut off by the advancing Germans.  Heading south across the Libyan Desert to rejoin their command, Sergeant Joe Gunn and his crew pick up five British stragglers, a Free Frenchman, and a Sudanese corporal with his Italian prisoner.  When a German plane strafes them, they shoot it down and capture the pilot.

In search of water, they are led by the Sudanese to an old fort, but they find the well nearly dry.  As they wait patiently for a thin trickle of water to replenish their supply, they are overtaken by a pursuing German motorized battalion.  They capture an advance scout car and learn from the prisoners that the Germans too are badly in need of water.  Gunn decides to hold off the Germans, whoa re unaware that the well is now dry.

Repeated attacks by the Germans decimate the defenders until only Gunn and a single British soldier are left alive.  What appears to be a final assault turns out to be a mass surrender as the thirst-crazed Germans throw down their arms in return for water.  Ironically, a German shell has made a direct hit on the well, reopening it and providing water for all.

The Films of Humphrey Bogart
by Clifford McCarty
Bonanza Books, New York (1965)

Poster artwork and additional photo courtesy of Gary