as Ruger Clancy Cooper as Sloan Production The Wild North was known at one stage by the working titles, "Constable Pedley", "The Wild North Country" and "North Country". The film was based on the true story of Mountie Constable Arthur Pedley, who in 1904 was assigned to find a lost missionary in northern Alberta. He managed to succeed despite great difficulty.<ref name="times">"Mushing it in the Royal Canadian Mounties: Hollywood location unit battles Idaho blizzard making The North Country'; Factual "mushing" through below zero." The New York Times, April 8, 1951, p. 101.</ref> Location filming started in Idaho in March 1951 with Granger and Corey. Filming was then halted to enable Granger to make The Light Touch (1951). Filming was scheduled to resume in July in Chipewyan, Alberta, Canada, where the actual events in Pedley's story had taken place. Due to inclement weather in Canada, filming was completed in the United States.Brady, Thomas F. "Remake of comedy listed at Warners; 'Sons O'Guns,' 1929 musical by Donahue and Thompson, on Weisbart schedule." The New York Times, March 29, 1951, p. 41.The Wild North was shot in a new colour process. John Arnold, MGM's executive director of photography, and John Nicholaus, head of the studio's film laboratory, worked with Ansco for 10 years to develop the new process. It had several advantages, being able to be used in standard black and white cameras and "... processed in the studio laboratory with essentially the same facility as black and white film ... [making] possible many time-saving steps in the handling, development and screening of daily rushes. An additional advantage noted in American Cinematographer was that the film was particularly good for 'day-for-night' shooting, which was used significantly in 'The Wild North'." Reception CriticalThe Wild North was critically reviewed by Bosley Crowther for The New York Times. He said, "... the picture is not of a consistent piece, either in its narration nor in its photography. There are high points and dismally low points in its generally pulp-fiction tale of how an amiable French Canadian woodsman brings in a Mountie who was sent to bring him in. The high points are reached in a sequence showing a battle of the two men with wolves and in another recording their transit of a boiling rapids in a bobbing canoe. The low points are touched when they are struggling through the obvious studio snow." Box OfficeThe Wild