If It Includes a Riverboat, Then It MUST Be a Good Movie!

Queen of the Yukon (1940) was made on the cheap by Monogram Studios (which made everything on the cheap), but they somehow managed to include a cool-looking riverboat and some really nice black-and-white location photography. So I am, of course, predisposed to like it.

Loosely based on the work of Jack London (I can't find a reference to a specific London story in the credits), the movie tells the story of Sadie Martin (Irene Rich), who runs the titular riverboat carrying men to and from their claims in the Yukon Territory. She also has a small casino on board, featuring either poker or faro, which represents her main source of income.

Sadie, though, is not a ruthless gambling queen. An important moment at the beginning of the movie shows her banning a passenger from further gambling after he's lost over a thousand dollars. Sadie knows he's taking his money back to his wife and kids, so cuts him off before he blows it all.

Ace Rincon (Charles Bickford) is a gambler that helps her run the boat and it is Ace who tells her that she practices noblesse oblige--her honesty and class have made her de facto Queen of the Yukon herself and, without really thinking about it, she takes her responsibilities seriously.

Ace, by the way, is in love with Sadie, but she was abandoned by a gambler husband in the past, so insists they just stay friends and partners. This doesn't stop Ace from watching out for Sadie pretty much 24/7, though.

The situation changes when Sadie's 18-year-old daughter shows up and is enamored by Sadie's rough-and-tumble life-style. She also develops a crush on Ace and decides she wants to learn how to deal faro and join her mother in running the gambling ship.

Sadie doesn't want that for her daughter, so she sells her boat to a mining company with the intention of moving back to the city with her daughter. But the mining company immediately uses their monopoly on river travel to crush the independent miners and soon begins a program of violent claim-jumping.

Sadie's noblesse oblige rears up again and she quickly organizes the miners with a plan to take the company to court, using her money and the miners' claim certificates to make their case. But when a man is murdered and the claim certificates vanish, the situation escalates quickly...

Monogram was a Poverty Row company, but Queen of the Yukon (like much of the studio's output) gets a lot out of its limited budget, with Bickford and Rich bringing class to their roles as the protagonists. Particularly nice is the scene in which the two believe they are finally going their seperate ways, with both of them too reticent to just say how they feel about each other.

And then, of course, there's that nifty riverboat and some nice scenery. Riverboats are like dinosaurs. By default, they make any movie better.

SIDENOTE: It's interesting that the movie's Big Gambling Scene features a faro game rather than the more commonly portrayed poker game. Faro was very common in the real life Old West, but doesn't get shown that much in Western films or TV shows.

Here's the movie from YouTube, though Amazon's print seems to be of a little better quality: