Diamond City

Diamond City (1949)

Set in the diamond fields of South Africa, Stafford Parker is a lawman trying to maintain a semblance of law and order in the "Wild South".

Date of release
1949-09-20
TMDB
6.0 / 10 (5)
Runtime
1h 30m
Genres
Western, Adventure, Drama
Director
David MacDonald

Casting

Interesting facts

Diamond City is a 1949 British drama film directed by David MacDonald and starring David Farrar, Honor Blackman, Diana Dors and Niall MacGinnis. The screenplay was by Roland Pertwee based on the story "Digger's Republic" by Roger Bray.

Production

The film was based on the true story of Stafford Parker who was elected president of the Diamond Diggers Republic in 1871.

It was announced in 1945 as Digger's Rest and was to star Stewart Granger from director Leslie Arliss. "This Parker was a born fighter, a great, husky guy", said Arliss. "He'd knocked around in the States as a young man and was tremendously impressed by the sheriff system, as he'd seen it practiced in the West." Patricia Roc was to play the Salvation Army girl with whom Parker falls in love.

Eventually the make starring role was given to David Farrar who had received acclaim for his performance in Black Narcissus. It was directed by David MacDonald, who had just directed The Bad Lord Byron (1949) and Christopher Columbus (1949) for Gainsborough. Diana Dors played the role of the saloon keeper when Jean Kent was unavailable. It was Dors' biggest part to date.

The film was seen as an attempt by producer Sydney Box to compete with Eureka Stockade (1949), another British film set and shot in a former colony.

It combined location filming in the Kimberley region of South Africa with studio work at Denham Studios in England.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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