Original title
Northwest Passage
Released
9/14/1958
Origin country
US
Genre
Action & Adventure, Drama
Production companies
MGM Television
Status
Ended
Number of seasons
1
Number of episodes
26
Northwest Passage is a 26-episode half-hour adventure television series produced by Metro Goldwyn Mayer about Major Robert Rogers during the time of the French and Indian War. The show derived its title and the main characters Rogers, Towne, and Marriner from the 1937 novel of the same name by Kenneth Roberts, and from the 1940 MGM feature film based on the novel. The scope of the novel was much broader than that of the series, and the second half of the book included an historically based attempt by Rogers to find a water route through North America as a "passage" to the Pacific Ocean. This attempt, lending its name to the novel and used by Roberts as a metaphor for the questing human spirit, is referenced in the first episode. One of the earlier series telecast in color, Northwest Passage aired new episodes on NBC from September 14, 1958, to March 13, 1959. Keith Larsen played the lead role; Buddy Ebsen, later the star of CBS's The Beverly Hillbillies and Barnaby Jones, appeared as Sergeant Hunk Marriner, and Don Burnett co-starred as Ensign Langdon Towne.
An escape is made from a French Prison Camp with the news that the French Army is planning a major attack.
Major Rogers, Hunk Marriner, and Langdon Towne fall into the hands of the French who imprison them in a stockade. During the day this trio, and other captured rangers, are forced to build a road through the forest. By night, using stolen tools, Rogers begins to dig a tunnel under the stockade wall.
General Amherst believes that a British captain named Stoddard has found a way to climb the 200-foot-high ""Heights of Abraham"" which shield French Quebec from a surprise attack. Amherst sends Major Rogers to make contact with a party in Quebec who might be able to contact Stoddard who's now being held (and tortured) in a French fort. The party proves to be a pretty woman named Audrey Bonay. She helps Rogers contact Stoddard by means of an arrow shot through the bars of the prisoner's cell. Rogers now returns to General Amherst with word of the location where the cliff might be climbed, but Audrey stays in Quebec to be with her mother.
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