The Tall T (1957)

Director:

Budd Boetticher

Writers:

Burt Kennedy (screenplay)
Elmore Leonard (story)

Release Date:

2 April 1957 (USA)

Genre:

Western

Tagline:

Taut! Torrid! Tremendous! T Is for Terror!

Plot:

Having lost his horse in a bet, Pat Brennan hitches a ride with a stagecoach carrying newlyweds, Willard and Doretta Mims...

Plot Keywords:

Love | Honeymoon | Hostage | Loveless Marriage | Bet

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Randolph Scott	...	Pat Brennan
Richard Boone	...	Frank Usher
Maureen O'Sullivan	...	Doretta Mims
Arthur Hunnicutt	...	Ed Rintoon
Skip Homeier	...	Billy Jack
Henry Silva	...	Chink
John Hubbard	...	Willard Mims
Robert Burton	...	Tenvoorde
Fred Sherman	...	Hank Parker (as Fred E. Sherman)
Christopher Olsen	...	Jeff (as Chris Olsen)

Runtime:

78 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound Recording)

Certification:

West Germany:12 | UK:U | USA:Approved (certificate #18272) | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, California, USA

Company:

Producers-Actors Corporation

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When the gang arrives at the camp site, Randolph Scott dismounts from the wrong side of his mule and nearly knocks Mrs. Mims from her precarious perch.

Quotes:

Pat Brennan: Did you love him?
Doretta Mims: I married him.
Pat Brennan: That's not what I asked.
Doretta Mims: Yes! Yes, I did.
Pat Brennan: Mrs. Mims, you're a liar. You didn't love him, and never for one minute thought he loved you. That's true, isn't it?
Doretta Mims: Do you know what it's like to be alone in a camp full of roughneck miners, and a father who holds a quiet hatred for you because you're not the son he's always wanted? Yes, I married Willard Mims because I couldn't stand being alone anymore. I know all the time he didn't love me, but I didn't care. I thought I'd make him love me... by the time that he asked me to marry him, I'd told myself inside for so long that I believed it was me he cared for and not the money.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Budd Boetticher: An American Original (2005) (V)

Come On, It's Going To Be A Nice Day

said, unnecessarily harshly, to the poor leading lady at the very end of the "Tall T" as Randolph Scott,having killed the bad guys, drags her, whimpering, towards the horses Poor girl. Just married, she has been kidnapped, betrayed by her new husband,seen him killed, been almost raped, forced to cook for the kidnap gang, and watch as Scott picked them all off one by one and left them in a heap. Wouldn't you whimper in these circumstances ? But Scott is having none of it.

It's a brilliant closing line in another one of the Boetticher-Brown-Scott collaborations that so enlivened the western genre in the late fifties. Beautifully written -- as was my other particular favourite "Ride Lonesome" -- all the actors bounce off Scotts' granite-featured impeturbality beautifully (Richard Boone, as ever, deserves a special mention) and the film encompasses a lot of aspects of western life as well as tells its' story at a good lick.

The only minus point was the cowardly husbands' boot-lace moustache. You knew he was going to do the dirty on his wife the moment you saw him, the cad !