This director is unbelievable, a true paradox of brilliance and folly. The film work itself is marvelous, camera and outdoor scenery, the tone and the balance. But the acting and script is some of the worst ever seen in an A picture. It isn't Stanwyck and Reagan, who give fine performances; it's everyone else. It really does seem like they took the various mannerisms and tropes of John Ford's Stock Company and handed out the parts to people they pulled off the street. "Here. You take the Carey Jr. Part. And you'll have the J. Farrell MacDonald part." Just awful performances from the character actors, one and all.
Compare this with a couple of fine Westerns from that year: "The Bounty Hunter" with Randolph Scott or "Black Horse Canyon" with Joel McCrea. We can see that Stanwyck dominates the screen just like those two quintessential Western stars did. Greatness.
The part played by Reagan was offered to Mitchum but he turned it down, wisely preferring "River of No Return" and "Track of the Cat."
This movie regularly played late nights for many years; ladies of a certain age no doubt remember it playing in the background at slumber parties when they were children. Stanwyck could be seen as a role model for those girls, in a way; powerful, active, direct, and bluntly honest both in her performances and in her life. She was loved throughout the industry, an absolute survivor who triumphed over an appalling youth as an orphan, rose through burlesque and vaudeville and stood on her own feet. Like her lifelong friends Joel McCrea and Ginger Rogers, and of course her husband of many years, Robert Taylor, she was a very successful rancher, and like them she lived a quiet life away from celebrity. Her best friend, Joan Crawford, admired her above all other actresses, and Rogers and McCrea held her in the highest professional regard.
But even an actress of that caliber, surrounded by a great crew and a fine leading man, can't rescue acting as bad as seen from this cast. Director Dwan should have been running the second unit and left the supervision of the performances to someone else on this one.
Compare this with a couple of fine Westerns from that year: "The Bounty Hunter" with Randolph Scott or "Black Horse Canyon" with Joel McCrea. We can see that Stanwyck dominates the screen just like those two quintessential Western stars did. Greatness.
The part played by Reagan was offered to Mitchum but he turned it down, wisely preferring "River of No Return" and "Track of the Cat."
This movie regularly played late nights for many years; ladies of a certain age no doubt remember it playing in the background at slumber parties when they were children. Stanwyck could be seen as a role model for those girls, in a way; powerful, active, direct, and bluntly honest both in her performances and in her life. She was loved throughout the industry, an absolute survivor who triumphed over an appalling youth as an orphan, rose through burlesque and vaudeville and stood on her own feet. Like her lifelong friends Joel McCrea and Ginger Rogers, and of course her husband of many years, Robert Taylor, she was a very successful rancher, and like them she lived a quiet life away from celebrity. Her best friend, Joan Crawford, admired her above all other actresses, and Rogers and McCrea held her in the highest professional regard.
But even an actress of that caliber, surrounded by a great crew and a fine leading man, can't rescue acting as bad as seen from this cast. Director Dwan should have been running the second unit and left the supervision of the performances to someone else on this one.