A blue sapphire, a memory of childhood, and a "gallant Gesture,"--these are the elements which Percival Wren molded into a chivalric romance set in his own time, the dying days of the Victorian era. Hs novel forms such exciting dramatic material that countless actors of stage and screen have tried their hand at it. Latest are Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, and Robert Preston as the "Beau Geste" trio.

Although, in this day and age, it seems silly rather than heroic for three grown men to dash off into the Sahara for the sake of a "gallant gesture," there is little to criticize in the production itself. William Well man is too good a director and Gary Cooper too good an actor to start letting their audiences down at this stage of the game. They have cooked up a show in the best traditions of his adventure, complete with a fort in the desert and thousands and thousands of Arabs biting the dust. There's the character of the hard-as-nails Army sergeant this time a Russian in the French Foreign Legion, which gives Brian Donlevy a chance to turn in one of the best performances of his career. There's the funeral pyre and the garrison of corpses,--all the dramatic and vivid scenes which can be wrung out of Wren's story.