This feature is 'saddled with' a rather hackneyed storyline of a young 'ne'er do well' risking capture after deciding to stop riding away into the distance and hanging up his gun, having fallen for the charms of a local girl. The former, Cheyenne Rogers, a very fresh-faced Glenn Ford, becomes infatuated with the daughter of the man who employed his skills to rob the local bank, unaware at first that she has identified him as a horse thief , given that the horse he has ridden into town she recognises as being that of Scott's local sheriff. As the friendship between the two men surfaces, she warms to the advances of the younger man, and admires his earnest attempts to leave his lawlessness behind him.
Randolph Scott and Claire Trevor play much less substantial roles than their stardom would suggest, with a young Glenn Ford and sprightly Evelyn Keyes enjoying the lion's share of the more meaningful scenes. Scott still plays to type in terms of embodying the staunch defender of law and order, whilst Trevor should have been given more scenes of import to strengthen the 'love triangle' which lies barely discernible in terms of the plot. Having made her career break playing the younger sister of Scarlett O'Hara four years earlier, this feature was her second pairing with Ford after 'Flight Lieutenant' twelve months earlier. Despite rumours of an offscreen romance between them, they did not openly strike up a relationship for a few more years. The romance which did start up was between Keyes and recently divorced director, Charles Vidor. Keyes would have a very self-serving attitude towards the 'casting-couch' culture of Hollywood, once proclaiming: 'I always took up with the man of the moment and there were many such moments.'
As for the Hungarian director, he was finally given a chance to make his mark at Colombia Pictures, where he would frequently clash with the autocratic studio president, and production chief, Henry Cohn. Although this would seem a strange choice of feature, compared to other studios' first launches of Technicolor, Vidor and his cinematographer, George Meehan, do their best with what they were handed - two scenes of note being our first encounter with Scott's sheriff as he advances across a beautiful expanse of an endless valley, and the action climax of the cattle stampede through the town. However, one wonders how much of the film's better aspects were influenced by the presence of assistant director, Budd Boetticher, and how much the latter learned at the feet of Vidor. What is known is that this would be the first feature where Boetticher would meet Scott with whom he would enjoy a future fruitful collaborative working relationship.
Set in the frontier ranching town of Red Valley in Utah, 1863, the film starts with the robbery of the Clinton bank, where the robbers themselves find themselves duped into cracking an empty safe. It soon becomes apparent that despite outwardly appearing to try and compensate his clients for their losses, local banker, Stanley Clinton, played ably by seasoned character actor, Porter Hall, has employed a small band of local thugs to rob his bank. The latter are led by Jack Lester, a true 'snake in the grass, so well portrayed by Bernard Nedell - with moustache bearing a striking similarity to Lee Van Cleef. Enter Cheyenne Rogers, late for the bank-job, having been hired by Clinton's accomplice, and Keyes' character's father, Uncle Willie McLeod. The latter is superbly played by Edgar Buchanan in perhaps his best cinematic role. As his daughter becomes embroiled with Cheyenne and in greater risk of falling foul of his unwelcome partners, Uncle Willy belatedly takes heed of his own admonition to his daughter of striking up a relationship with Ford's character: 'A bad man's bad for himself and for everyone else.' His realisation of how greed has led him astray leads to a showdown with Clinton, whilst Cheyenne seeks retribution for coming close to the hangman's noose after being framed for the murders which accompanied the staged bank robbery.
One main weakness of the movie is what many regard as the incongruous touches of light comedy throughout the feature. Many of these scenes revolve around the literally explosive character of Cheyenne's partner in crime, Nitro, played by ex-stuntman Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams. Here he once again plays the dim, fiery, but reliable sidekick that was his standard character role in the late 30s and early 40s. Another comedy cameo is provided by Irving Bacon as the bar manager trying and comedically failing to safeguard his glassware and bar so that he can finally escape Red Valley. Cue a bar brawl worthy of the silent film era. Another issue surrounds some convenient holes in the plot, none more so than that of Cheyenne drawing a gun on Scott's sheriff to steal the latter's horse without neither recognising their former friend. A third aspect which detracts from the whole are lost opportunities to heighten the melodrama, such as the aforementioned failure to explore Trevor's Countess' feelings for Ford's wayward 'man on the run', whose brushes with law and order stem from his coming to her defence in their youth. The film script is also full of historical inaccuracies, from Clinton's description of the bank's new safe as a 'battleship' when they would not appear for another twenty years after the date of the film's setting, to a similar gaffe from one character referring to the stampede in comparison to Custer's last stand which took place in 1876, a full thirteen years after the film's Civil War setting.
Despite these flaws, this feature did serve as a vehicle for Columbia to groom their young male star whose ascendancy would be much better served with his next collaboration with King Vidor on 'Gilda' three years later. As a footnote, the screenplay was based on a novel by Frederick Faust, the creator of 'Dr Kildare', under one of his pseudonyms. Faust had enlisted as a war correspondent for 'Harper's Magazine' in the conflict in Italy in World War Two, hoping that his experiences of the battlefield on the front-line would garner material for a war novel, but he was killed having been hit by shrapnel during heavy fighting just twelve months after the release of this picture.
Randolph Scott and Claire Trevor play much less substantial roles than their stardom would suggest, with a young Glenn Ford and sprightly Evelyn Keyes enjoying the lion's share of the more meaningful scenes. Scott still plays to type in terms of embodying the staunch defender of law and order, whilst Trevor should have been given more scenes of import to strengthen the 'love triangle' which lies barely discernible in terms of the plot. Having made her career break playing the younger sister of Scarlett O'Hara four years earlier, this feature was her second pairing with Ford after 'Flight Lieutenant' twelve months earlier. Despite rumours of an offscreen romance between them, they did not openly strike up a relationship for a few more years. The romance which did start up was between Keyes and recently divorced director, Charles Vidor. Keyes would have a very self-serving attitude towards the 'casting-couch' culture of Hollywood, once proclaiming: 'I always took up with the man of the moment and there were many such moments.'
As for the Hungarian director, he was finally given a chance to make his mark at Colombia Pictures, where he would frequently clash with the autocratic studio president, and production chief, Henry Cohn. Although this would seem a strange choice of feature, compared to other studios' first launches of Technicolor, Vidor and his cinematographer, George Meehan, do their best with what they were handed - two scenes of note being our first encounter with Scott's sheriff as he advances across a beautiful expanse of an endless valley, and the action climax of the cattle stampede through the town. However, one wonders how much of the film's better aspects were influenced by the presence of assistant director, Budd Boetticher, and how much the latter learned at the feet of Vidor. What is known is that this would be the first feature where Boetticher would meet Scott with whom he would enjoy a future fruitful collaborative working relationship.
Set in the frontier ranching town of Red Valley in Utah, 1863, the film starts with the robbery of the Clinton bank, where the robbers themselves find themselves duped into cracking an empty safe. It soon becomes apparent that despite outwardly appearing to try and compensate his clients for their losses, local banker, Stanley Clinton, played ably by seasoned character actor, Porter Hall, has employed a small band of local thugs to rob his bank. The latter are led by Jack Lester, a true 'snake in the grass, so well portrayed by Bernard Nedell - with moustache bearing a striking similarity to Lee Van Cleef. Enter Cheyenne Rogers, late for the bank-job, having been hired by Clinton's accomplice, and Keyes' character's father, Uncle Willie McLeod. The latter is superbly played by Edgar Buchanan in perhaps his best cinematic role. As his daughter becomes embroiled with Cheyenne and in greater risk of falling foul of his unwelcome partners, Uncle Willy belatedly takes heed of his own admonition to his daughter of striking up a relationship with Ford's character: 'A bad man's bad for himself and for everyone else.' His realisation of how greed has led him astray leads to a showdown with Clinton, whilst Cheyenne seeks retribution for coming close to the hangman's noose after being framed for the murders which accompanied the staged bank robbery.
One main weakness of the movie is what many regard as the incongruous touches of light comedy throughout the feature. Many of these scenes revolve around the literally explosive character of Cheyenne's partner in crime, Nitro, played by ex-stuntman Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams. Here he once again plays the dim, fiery, but reliable sidekick that was his standard character role in the late 30s and early 40s. Another comedy cameo is provided by Irving Bacon as the bar manager trying and comedically failing to safeguard his glassware and bar so that he can finally escape Red Valley. Cue a bar brawl worthy of the silent film era. Another issue surrounds some convenient holes in the plot, none more so than that of Cheyenne drawing a gun on Scott's sheriff to steal the latter's horse without neither recognising their former friend. A third aspect which detracts from the whole are lost opportunities to heighten the melodrama, such as the aforementioned failure to explore Trevor's Countess' feelings for Ford's wayward 'man on the run', whose brushes with law and order stem from his coming to her defence in their youth. The film script is also full of historical inaccuracies, from Clinton's description of the bank's new safe as a 'battleship' when they would not appear for another twenty years after the date of the film's setting, to a similar gaffe from one character referring to the stampede in comparison to Custer's last stand which took place in 1876, a full thirteen years after the film's Civil War setting.
Despite these flaws, this feature did serve as a vehicle for Columbia to groom their young male star whose ascendancy would be much better served with his next collaboration with King Vidor on 'Gilda' three years later. As a footnote, the screenplay was based on a novel by Frederick Faust, the creator of 'Dr Kildare', under one of his pseudonyms. Faust had enlisted as a war correspondent for 'Harper's Magazine' in the conflict in Italy in World War Two, hoping that his experiences of the battlefield on the front-line would garner material for a war novel, but he was killed having been hit by shrapnel during heavy fighting just twelve months after the release of this picture.