The Cimarron Kid (1952)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Budd Boetticher

Writers:

Kay Lenard (story)
Louis Stevens (story)

Release Date:

31 March 1952 (Sweden)

Genre:

Western

Plot:

Audie Murphy comes into his own as a Western star in this story. Wrongly accused by crooked railroad...

Plot Keywords:

Remake

Cast

Audie Murphy	...	Bill Doolin / The Cimarron Kid
Beverly Tyler	...	Carrie Roberts
James Best	...	Bitter Creek Dalton
Yvette Duguay	...	Cimarron Rose Adams (as Yvette Dugay)
John Hudson	...	Dynamite Dick Dalton
Hugh O'Brian	...	Red Buck
Roy Roberts	...	Pat Roberts
David Wolfe	...	Sam Swanson
Noah Beery Jr.	...	Bob Dalton (as Noah Beery)
Leif Erickson	...	Marshal John Sutton
John Hubbard	...	George Weber
Frank Silvera	...	Stacey Marshall

Runtime:

84 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

USA:Approved (certificate #15433) | Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | UK:U

Filming Locations:

Columbia State Historic Park - 22708 Broadway, Columbia, California, USA

Company:

Universal International Pictures (UI)

Trivia:

Film debut of William Reynolds.

Quotes:

Warden: Hate gets under a man's skin. It spoils his whole life. It's like a bad growth, kid. You got to get rid of it.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Budd Boetticher: A Man Can Do That (2005) (TV)

THE CIMARRON KID (Budd Boetticher, 1952) **1/2

This emerges as a pretty good example of the typical Audie Murphy Western vehicle – though of lesser quality to the only one I had previously watched, NO NAME ON THE BULLET (1959) and, being Budd Boetticher's first Western, clearly a minor effort in his canon. Many films of this era treated (in a heavily romanticized manner) the exploits of famous outlaws of the Old West: Murphy appears as Bill Doolin and, at one point, he is told by the leader of The Dalton Gang that "They'll be writing ballads about us" and, sure enough, their exploits were later immortalized in music by the Country Rock band Eagles in "Doolin-Dalton", a song off of their second album "Desperado" (1973). Typically, Murphy is seen forced into a life of crime by circumstances or, more precisely, the persecution of a law-enforcement officer (while another, played by Leif Erickson, is more sympathetic to his plight). As ever, the gang is an eclectic assortment of characters: affable Noah Beery Jr. is their leader, Hugh O'Brian the red-headed hot-tempered challenger, James Best the ladies' man, Frank Silvera the half-breed, etc.; interestingly, we get a couple of romances going on (Murphy with the daughter of a man who shelters them and Best with a fiery Mexican girl) and the female characters are surprisingly strong for this type of film. Reassembling themselves in the wake of a bank hold-up gone awry (the film's best action sequence, climaxing in Beery's memorable come-uppance with the spilling coins a graphic substitution for blood), the gang is subsequently betrayed by the 'inside man' in a train robbery they try to pull off. Murphy is eventually persuaded to give himself up, with Erickson promising him a fair trial this time around. Shot in pleasant Technicolor, the generically-titled THE CIMARRON KID serves up compact, pacy and unpretentious entertainment – perfect viewing after a hard day's work.