Ice Palace (1960)

Shortly after WWI, a soldier (Richard Burton) returning home to Seattle finds that his former employer (Barry Kelley) refuses to give him his old job back in order to discourage his daughter's (Martha Hyer) romantic interest in the ex-soldier. After running off to Alaska, he partners with a fisherman (Robert Ryan) in the hopes of building a cannery empire. But the next 40 years finds them embroiled in both personal and professional conflicts on Alaska's long road to statehood. Based on the novel by Edna Ferber, this wannabe epic film tries to do for Alaska what Ferber's GIANT did for Texas. I'm no fan of GIANT by any means but this 2 1/2 hour film is a cookie cutter imitation. It plods along, often jumping decades, in order to squeeze three generations (Richard Burton begets daughter Shirley Knight who begets daughter Diane McBain) of storylines. The film could have been funded by the Alaska Chamber Of Commerce for all the publicity and deference it gets. The normally impressive Joseph F. Biroc's lensing is compromised by obvious rear projection work as well as studio bound sets and Max Steiner's generic score is pretty pitiful (though he wrote a lovely Eskimo theme). Directed by Vincent Sherman. With Carolyn Jones, Jim Backus, Ray Danton, George Takei and Karl Swenson.