Great Day in the Morning (1956)

A Confederate drifter wins a hotel-saloon at poker in Denver but two rival female admirers, local Union sympathizers, Southern gold miners and an orphaned boy complicate his life.

Director:

Jacques Tourneur

Writers:

Lesser Samuels (screen play), Robert Hardy Andrews (novel)

Stars:

Virginia Mayo, Robert Stack, Ruth Roman

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Virginia Mayo	...	Ann Merry Alaine
Robert Stack	...	Owen Pentecost
Ruth Roman	...	Boston Grant
Alex Nicol	...	Captain Stephen Kirby
Raymond Burr	...	Jumbo Means
Leo Gordon	...	Zeff Masterson
Regis Toomey	...	Father Murphy
Carleton Young	...	Col. Gibson (as Carlton Young)
Donald MacDonald	...	Gary John Lawford

Storyline

After a card game Southerner Owen Pentecost finds himself the owner of a Denver hotel. Involved with two women - one who came with the hotel, and one newly arrived from the East to open a dress shop - he then has to make even more fundamental choices when, with the start of the Civil War, he becomes one of a small minority in a strongly Unionist town.

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Plot Keywords:

hotel | card game | 1860s | based on novel | child with a gun | 

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Taglines:

THE BUGLE BLAST that echoed thru history!

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Genres:

Action | Adventure | Drama | Romance | Western

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Certificate:

Approved

Did You Know?

Trivia

Opening credits: The characters and events depicted in this photoplay are fictional. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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Goofs

Owen takes a young boy under his wing and is aided by Boston, a saloon girl. She sets the boy a sum to complete and when it's done says it's correct but it's not as the 3rd line should be 16535 not 23536 which obviously makes the final total wrong. the sum is 7842 + 8693. = 23526.

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Quotes

Jumbo Means: Go back to Georgia, the whole lot of you. Colorado's gonna belong to us loyal Union men - the only part comin' to you is six feet of ground, dug deep.

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Crazy Credits

Opening credits prologue: In that part of our country which we know today as Colorado, the Indians fought the white man for possession of the land and the white men fought each other for the same land.

It was a small but bloody rehearsal for the War Between the States which was soon to follow. It had its patriots and its profiteers, its quiet heroes and its noisy flag wavers.

So one day early in 1861 - - -

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Soundtracks

Bonnie Blue Flag
(uncredited)
Music taken from traditional Irish marching song
Lyrics by Harry McCarthy (1861)
Passages integrated into the score

User Reviews

A big, lusty, brawling film of the Colorado Gold Rush

"Great Day in the Morning" is a western from RKO in 1956. It takes place just before the Civil War and deals with Union and Confederate factions both trying to get some gold in Colorado in order to finance the war. Based on the novel by Robert Hardy Andrews, the film is quite faithful to the book. Robert Stack plays a southern gunslinger with cynical overtones. Virginia Mayo, a Technicolor knock-out, meets Stack on her way west and has a love/hate relationship with him. Ruth Roman is a hostess with cleavage in Raymond Burr's saloon and she falls like a ton of bricks for Stack. Burr plays a heavy and gives Roman a bad time. A highpoint of the film is a critical card game between Stack and Burr with Roman dealing the cards. Of course Mayo and Roman are fighting like crazy over Stack.

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

16 May 1956 (USA)

Also Known As:

Great Day in the Morning

Filming Locations:

Silverton, Colorado, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Edmund Grainger Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

92 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound Recording)

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1