Hell’s Heroes (1929) Starring Charles Bickford,
Raymond Hatton, Fred Kohler Directed by William Wyler Screenplay by Tom Reed
and C. Gardner Sullivan. Based on the novel The Three Godfathers by Peter B.
Kyne (New York, 1913). Produced by Carl Laemmle. Run Time: 78 min USA. Black
and White Western, Christmas
You might not think of a film with the theme of redemption
at Christmas to be called Hell’s Heroes, but the first sound film based
on Peter B. Kyne’s novel The Three Godfathers is called just that. While
this might be the first sound film, it is not the first or the last to be based
on the novel. Even before there was a novel, there was a short story "Broncho
Billy and the Baby," by Kyne published in The Saturday Evening Post
in 1910. This served as the basis of an Essanay short film of the same name in
1915.
The novel, first published in The Saturday Evening Post
in 1912, was bought by Bluebird Photoplay and made into the film The
Three Godfathers (1916) co-starring Harry Carey. The story was remade as Marked
Men (1919), directed by John Ford and again co-starring Harry Carey.
Hell’s Heroes was shot on location in the Mojave Desert, in and around the town of Bodie, California, and utilized much of the town's main street and included both exterior and interior footage of the Bodie Bank, which burned in 1932, and Methodist Church. The film opened in New York on the week of December 27, 1929 and went into wide release on January 5, 1930. The film print for Hell's Heroes was fully restored by The Film Foundation; an organization founded in 1990 by director Martin Scorsese.