Word: chamonix
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...heroes and heroines had names like Fulke Ravensworth, Marion Lady Vavasour and Vaux or Sir Fulke Erceldorme. Elinor Glyn and her tiger skin were nothing to Ouida's scented boudoirs. Yet, in an age before Cinerama, she was a great descriptive writer, able to evoke Venice, Vienna, Chamonix without ever having paid them so much as a courtesy call...
...blinding white grandeur of Mont Blanc, soaring above the blue lake at Chamonix, has drawn alpinists to France for centuries. Since men first scaled Western Europe's highest peak in 1786, some 20,000 people have successfully climbed to the top (15,781 ft.), and 65 have died on the way. But in all those years, mountaineers mastered only four routes to the peak itself. Attempted but never conquered was a possible fifth way, the Grand Pilastre, a 5,000-ft. perpendicular wall of gripless, smooth rock and slithery green ice that looms over empty space toward the summit...
...summertime the queen of the Alps, 15,781-ft. Mont Blanc, puts only minor difficulties in the path of those who would woo and conquer her. Each year in the climbing season some 75,000 mountaineers flock to the resort town of Chamonix to have a try at scaling her heights, and most of them succeed. But in the winter, when her steep slopes are swept by gales often reaching 100 miles an hour and the temperature drops below zero, the icy-hearted mountain becomes a fickle and merciless termagant. Few, even among expert mountain climbers, care to risk...
...blue and the air was warm, the kind of weather when skiers down below wish for snow. Four days later the skiers had their snow. Up above, the Alpine peaks were shrouded with ominous evidence of storm and fury. Torn between heartache and indignation, the people of Chamonix gazed aloft, muttered about laws to prevent off-season climbing, and gazed hopefully at the local guides, who refused to budge. "Their action was voluntary," said the guides. "Even to save two men, you can't risk the lives of ten or 15 rescuers with wives and children...
Good is represented by a simple-minded old shepherd (Spencer Tracy), the only man ever to climb The Mountain alone (actually the Aiguille du Midi, near Chamonix in the French Alps, where the location shots were made). Evil is the younger brother (Robert Wagner) whom the shepherd, in the absence of a midwife, "brought into the world with his own hands." When a plane rumored to be carrying gold crashes on top of The Mountain just as winter is setting in, little brother begs big brother to guide him up the mountain so that he can loot the plane...