Colorado Territory (1949)

In Colorado territory, outlaw Wes McQueen escapes jail to pull a railroad robbery but, upon meeting pretty settler Julie Ann, he wonders about going straight.

Director:

Raoul Walsh

Writers:

John Twist, Edmund H. North

Stars:

Joel McCrea, Virginia Mayo, Dorothy Malone

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Joel McCrea	...	Wes McQueen
Virginia Mayo	...	Colorado Carson
Dorothy Malone	...	Julie Ann Winslow
Henry Hull	...	Fred Winslow
John Archer	...	Reno Blake
James Mitchell	...	Duke Harris
Morris Ankrum	...	United States Marshal
Basil Ruysdael	...	Dave Rickard
Frank Puglia	...	Brother Tomas
Ian Wolfe	...	Homer Wallace
Harry Woods	...	Pluthner
Houseley Stevenson	...	Prospector

Storyline

Outlaw Wes McQueen is sprung from jail to help pull one last railroad job. He doesn't like his new partners - except dance-hall girl Colorado - and anyway fancies Julie Ann newly arrived from the east to set up home with her father. Maybe time to get out. Unfortunately he also has a $10,000 reward on his head, dead or alive.

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Plot Keywords:

outlaw | train | train robbery | chase | sheriff | 

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Taglines:

Here their love brings them ... a man with a price on his head and a girl with a price on her kisses !

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Genres:

Western

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Certificate:

Approved

Did You Know?

Trivia

The first American movie to be banned in West Germany, due to being 'an example of gangster films which glorify anti-social elements'.

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Goofs

When Wes escapes from the jail cell at the beginning, and the lawmen rush into the cell and find the window bars sawed open with a hacksaw, they lift the window bars and they flex, obviously not made of iron or steel and clearly anyone could easily just tear them out by hand.

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Quotes

Fred Winslow: My boy, never buy a foot of land more than five miles from home and not until you've seen it felt it, tasted it and smelled it. And at that, you might get bamboozled.

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Connections

Featured in John Wayne Made Me Cry: Our Western Heros (2002)

User Reviews

`The sun goes west and so the opportunity'

Colorado Territory is undoubtedly one of the best films directed by Raoul Walsh.In fact it's sort of a remake of a film Walsh directed 10 years before this one – High Sierra with Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino.

Colorado Territory's story revolves around a very sympathetic outlaw Wes McQueen (Joel McCrea) who is finally caught and put in jail but obviously not for a very long time, cause his former companions devise a plan to rob the train and are most certainly in need of him to be able to pull it off successfully. So they help him to escape. After Wes succeeds in doing so he finds a refuge in a distant abandoned village in the mountains where he meets his partners together with a spirited and beautiful woman Colorado (Virginia Mayo) who ends up falling in love with him not knowing that his heart already belongs to another very different woman Julie Ann (Dorothy Malone) who in her turn, doesn't know about Wes McQueen being one of the most sought after outlaws in the west. The question now is not who stays with the girl, but who stays with the guy in the most fateful and poignant film's ending. 8/10

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

11 June 1949 (USA)

Also Known As:

North of the Rio Grande

Filming Locations:

Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, Colorado, USA

Box Office

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$4,755

Company Credits

Production Co:

Warner Bros.

Technical Specs

Runtime:

94 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1