Focusing on Hollywood's early attempts at Victorian literature adaptations, this chapter examines George Stevens’ 1939 version of Kipling's poem ‘Gunga Din,’ emphasising how the film's loose resemblance to its source material demonstrates a break in the American valorisation of British culture. Gunga Din completely dismantles Kipling's poem, recreating it as an example of a uniquely American form: the seamless studio system product that led to Hollywood's international dominance in cultural production. Yet, while the politics of the adaptation resemble textual strategies of resistance prevalent in settler colonial cultures, the film's retention of colonial literature's representation of Kipling's ‘natives’ addresses an America beginning to assert a distinct national culture while positioning itself as a future imperial power.

As 1939 drew to a close, the golden age of Hollywood had just experienced a twelve-month period that saw the release of the ‘best of American cinema’ staples Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stagecoach, Of Mice and Men, Wuthering Heights, and Goodbye, Mr. Chips. However, despite the spate of critically and commercially successful films released during what film historians have deemed Hollywood's ‘Golden Year,’ one of the year's biggest box-office draws was a genre picture that, although acclaimed for its entertainment value and sheer scope, has never quite earned the prominence in cinema history as its much-touted competitors: George Stevens’ Gunga Din. Loosely adapted from Rudyard Kipling's ballad of the same name, Gunga Din has seen its reputation as one of the finest epics of the studio era damaged over the intervening decades as a result of allegations of condescending and one-dimensional depictions of its Indian characters.

Though Gunga Din has not achieved the same stature in the history of American cinema as its ‘Golden Year’ counterparts, the film's popularity upon its release is indicative of the cultural anxieties gripping America during the time period stemming from the death rattle of Manifest Destiny and the traumas of the Great Depression – anxieties that led to the reinvigorated popularity of the western and what Robert B. Ray calls the ‘disguised western’ during the studio era. According to Ray: