TRAIL OF '98
starring Dolores Del Rio and Ralph Forbes
PHOTOPLAY
April, 1928
This is the picture that lifted Clarence Brown into the position of highest paid director in Hollywood. As the result of "The Trail of '98," Brown will get $300,000 a year whether or not he works.
Probably Brown is worth it. He has not made a boxoffice flop in his whole career. This, in particular, is a mighty panorama of the Alaskan gold rush. You will find everything here: greed, love, pathos, humor, famine and wealth.
In a way, "The Trail of '98" has the sweep of "The Covered Wagon." You follow Brown's fortune seekers with breathless interest from the moment their steamboat puffs its way out of the Golden Gate, laden with gold maddened humans from every corner of the globe, until the last fadeout after the burning of Dawson City.
The whole gold rush trail is here - over the snowy perils of Chilkoot Pass and through the river rapids. The big menace is always Old Man Mercury, hovering at forty or so below zero.
"The Trail of '98" is that dream of all megaphone wielders: a purely director's picture. Still, the story of the six principal protagonists - played by Dolores Del Rio, Ralph Forbes, Karl Dane, Harry Carey, Tully Marshall and George Cooper - is never lost. Basically, it is the romance of two adventurers in the Yukon, one a young Scotchman, the other the granddaughter of an old Jew making a last quest for a fortune.
It has tremendous interest as Brown pictures it, this last stand of roystering, hard-fisted pioneer America.