Talk:Guardian of the Wilderness

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Peculiar and entertaining film presenting a lot of history, most of it more or less correct[edit]

Guardian of the Wilderness is readily available for viewing on youtube as of this writing and it's not only rather entertaining, it presents some important history of which few Americans are aware, the story of Galen Clark rescuing what is now known as the Yosemite National Park from being devastated by loggers, with the assistance of John Muir (apparently, the superb sequence with Abraham Lincoln was predictably fictional, however).

The casting of Denver Pyle as Clark is extremely counterintuitive but does work. Pyle's a wonderful actor but this is the only time I know of in which he played the lead in a theatrical film or pretty much anything else. He seems quite a bit older and heavier than Clark actually was. Clark was 42 at the beginning of the film while Pyle was 56; you can see the photograph of the actual Clark at the bottom of the article taken circa 1858, standing in front of a giant sequoia, and notice that he looked like a typical movie leading man, which intrigues me about Pyle getting the part. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd bankrolled much of this independent film himself with the fortune he'd made by buying "played-out" oil wells that eventually brought a tidal wave of money when the technology and the price of oil made retrieving the oil that was still left in them an extremely profitable endeavor to say the very least. In any case, Pyle was usually an entertaining actor, playing many dozens of varied roles across the years, and it is good to see him get a real leading role in a movie involving compelling subject matter, not to mention the presence of the great John Dehner (pronounced DAY-ner), a forerunner of Daniel Day-Lewis (or descendant of Paul Muni) in the world of 1950s & '60s supporting players capable of stupefyingly enormous range, portraying the legendary John Muir. Racing Forward (talk) 00:05, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]