After the Civil War, a highly decorated Shoshone Indian veteran plans to raise cattle in Wyoming but white farmers plan to grab fertile tribal lands by pitting the whites against the Indians.
A trapper and his two partners work as scouts for a remote army fort where they witness an incompetent colonel's decision to throw his small unprepared garrison against Red Cloud's sizable Sioux force.
A firebrand heiress clashes with her tyrannical father, a cattle rancher who fancies himself a Napoleon; but their relationship turns ugly only when he finds himself a new woman.
Director:
Anthony Mann
Stars:
Barbara Stanwyck,
Wendell Corey,
Walter Huston
A New York City detective, traveling by train between New York and Baltimore, tries to foil an on-board plot to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln before he reaches Baltimore to give a major pre-Inauguration speech in 1861.
Marshal Jake Wade aids outlaw Clint Hollister escape jail but Clint wants to know where Wade hid an old hold-up loot taken while both men were outlaws in the same gang.
Director:
John Sturges
Stars:
Robert Taylor,
Richard Widmark,
Patricia Owens
Lance Poole, an Indian who won a Medal of Honor fighting at Gettysburg, returns to his tribal lands intent on peaceful cattle ranching. But white sheep farmers want his fertile grass range and manage to turn the ostensibly civilized white population against the tribes, with tragic results.Written by
Jim Beaver <[email protected]>
After an unsuccessful May 1950 press preview, MGM shelved the film. The grim movie was superbly made, but its uncompromising, downbeat story seemed to spell box-office disaster. After the release of the more mainstream Broken Arrow (1950) the following fall, it did get some bottom-of-the-bill bookings in neighborhood grindhouses but did little business and has remained little seen. See more »
Quotes
Lance Poole:
The whites outnumber us, Father. The war is over. All the wars... even yours. The country is growing up. They gave me these stripes wiithout testing my blood. I led a squad of white men. I slept in the same blankets with them, ate out of the same pan. I held their heads when they died. Whey should it be any different now?
Mr. Poole:
You are home. You are an Indian.
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I saw this film as a teenager and immediately recognized it as the real thing. This movie had more atomic weight in its characters,setting, plot and theme than most other films of its time (and the year 1950 was indeed a most impressive time for westerns). Its frank and honest treatment of racism and injustice rang true from beginning to end. Taylor was ,as usual, a tough and gritty hero with three dimensions. Louis Calhern filled the role of chief villain and head bigot impeccably.The film was tough, honest, gritty and real; moreover, it was totally devoid of sentimentality or clichés. I wonder if it wouldeven have been made just two years later-during the McCarthy era.Robert Taylor had clearly evolved from a "pretty boy" leading man of the 1930s into a believable ,masculine hero for a tough-minded postwar film environment.
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I saw this film as a teenager and immediately recognized it as the real thing. This movie had more atomic weight in its characters,setting, plot and theme than most other films of its time (and the year 1950 was indeed a most impressive time for westerns). Its frank and honest treatment of racism and injustice rang true from beginning to end. Taylor was ,as usual, a tough and gritty hero with three dimensions. Louis Calhern filled the role of chief villain and head bigot impeccably.The film was tough, honest, gritty and real; moreover, it was totally devoid of sentimentality or clichés. I wonder if it wouldeven have been made just two years later-during the McCarthy era.Robert Taylor had clearly evolved from a "pretty boy" leading man of the 1930s into a believable ,masculine hero for a tough-minded postwar film environment.