Jack London's classic tale about Buck the wonder dog has been completely turned on its head and become a Clark Gable vehicle - and you know something? It actually works. Gable is completely at home playing Jack Thornton in the snowy north with Jack Oakie doing some amiable sidekick stuff and Loretta Young being beautiful in her fur.
Gable and Young make a strong couple - him manly and she lady like - and of course there's the extra appeal knowing that in real life they did have an affair resulting in Young having a kid out of wedlock and covering it up as an "adopted" child. (Though apparently sexual assault was involved.)
I enjoyed Reginald Owen as the villain - a seemingly pompous English idiot who is actually quite scary - and the stuff from the novel that is used (eg Buck winning a dog sled competition) is effective.
The movie does lose points by having Gable so passive at the end when the baddies come in and try to take his gold (they leave him and Young there and only get their just desserts by capsizing in the canoe and drowning... which feels like deux ex machina cheating). But I liked it that Young's husband turns up at the end meaning she and Gable can't be together, which gives the movie romantic poignancy. It's good solid Clarke Gable-William Wellman stuff that holds up well.
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