Victor McLaglen & Edmund Lowe

Teamed as rivals, sometimes merely as foils to one another in the pursuit of romance, but mostly to goad and otherwise best each other as they pursue enemies or criminals or even deadlines at breakneck speed, Edmund Lowe and Victor McLaglen appear together in at least 13 productions. The raging animus they portray for one another in most of these performances, while not usually displaced, does usually resolve into unwavering friendship and loyalty, often leaving the object of their rivalry forlorn or ignored or, at the very least, checked.

Perhaps their best known collaboration of this ilk occurs in their portrayals of Marine Corps regulars Quirt and Flagg, which begin with the silent film What Price Glory (1926) and culminate with its three “talkie” sequels: The Cock-eyed World (1929), Women of All Nations (1931), and Hot Pepper (1933), as well as the movie short The Stolen Jools (1931) in which Mr. Lowe and Mr. McLaglen make cameo appearances in the roles that the movie-going public had, by that time, become accustomed to seeing them. They do make one other movie, Call Out the Marines (1942), whereby they again don the familiar uniforms of the Marine Corps, but this time not as Quirt and Flagg.

In their final movie together, Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), we find them not as rivals, but as friendly members of the crew accommodating Phileas Fogg (i.e. David Niven) in his mad-dash effort to steam across the Atlantic ahead of a deadline. Their appearance on the screen is brief, but Mr. McLaglen and Mr. Lowe do make time to share a laugh between themselves over the protest and lament Andy Devine, another member of the crew, makes just before the ship’s wooden feminine figurehead is heaved into the steamer’s boiler in a last-ditch effort to keep the fire going.

The combined efforts of these two actors spanned 30 years. Had not time ran out for them, there may have been more collaborations from them. Victor McLaglen died in 1959 shortly after appearing in the TV production Rawhide, in an episode, interestingly enough, that was directed by his son Andrew. Edmund Lowe retired from acting the following year and passed away 11 years later in 1971 at the age of 81.

Here is a list of their collaborations:

What Price Glory (1926)
Happy Days (1929)
The Cock-Eyed World (1929)
The Stolen Jools (short)(1931)
Women of All Nations (1931)
Guilty as Hell (1932)
Hot Pepper (1933)
No More Women (1934)
Under Pressure (1935)
The Great Hotel Murder (1935)
Call Out the Marines (1942)
This Is Your Life (1952 TV Series)
Episode: Victor McLaglen (1953)
Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)