Gunga Din: From Kipling's Poem to Hollywood's Action-Adventure Classic

"You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din."

Those most famous words from the 1892 poem by Rudyard Kipling have reverberated through cinema sound speakers for nearly eighty years since the RKO release of George Steven's Gunga Din starring Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Joan Fontaine, and Sam Jaffe.

The realization of the movie was as much of an epic quest as the heroic journeys of the story's characters. Author William Chemerka's new research work unfolds as more than ju...