The Proud Rebel

Great acting by Olivia DeHavilland (!), Alan Ladd (!), and son David Ladd. Director Michael Curtiz (Casablanca) shows his soft side in this family film about a man selling his dog to heal his son's muteness. I loved this film when I was a pre-teen, and watched it again last night with my twelve-year-old, and she was pulled into it faster than I was. (Harry) Dean Stanton as the villain, good photography and effective musical score by Jerome Moross in the "Big Country" mold. Lackluster action scenes aren't bad enough to ruin the mood; but it will remind many viewers of "Shane".

I grew up watching "Family Classics with Frazier Thomas", a program that featured a wide variety of family friendly movies. This was one of them(so was TOBOR THE GREAT but we won't get into that-I just finished reviewing that clunker a few minutes ago). Alan Ladd plays Civil War veteran John Chandler, who is seeking treatment for his mute son(played by real-life son David Ladd), and meets up with a town spinster (Olivia DeHavilland), who takes both of them in when Chandler is falsley accused of starting a brawl, facing thirty days in the town jail. In the meantime, a sheep herder (Dean Jagger) and his juvenile-delinquent sons attempt to force DeHavilland off her ranch. Chandler must also make the tough choice to sell young David's beloved dog to a breeder in order to pay for his treatment.

The performances are first-rate. Alan and David have one of the best father-son chemistries in movie history-(along with Jon Voight and Ricky Schroeder in THE CHAMP twenty or so years later). Also, Olivia DeHavilland, Dean Jagger, and veteran actor Harry Dean Stanton help make this one a must-see for all. Even horror veteran John Carradine makes a cameo appearance in the opening scene.

Sadly, this family classic makes the untimely death of Alan Ladd a few years later all the more tragic.

Rating: ****1/2 out of *****

A very nice classic movie from the Golden Age of Hollywood. I disagree with another reviewer that the film is too slow. It develops and moves along fine. The trouble with todays youth, is that everything has too spill out in a minute flat as nearly everyone under 25 has A.D.H.D or is so pumped up on energy drinks. They are so impatient and snappy. That there are no real craftsmen anywhere or in any field nowadays. It is often said all new movies have 1 dimension characters. Well if you pace it slower and show the back round of the characters. You can have fully developed and believable characters. Alan Ladd did a great portrayal of the character, as he did with the Shane character in the movie of the same name, made 5 years earlier and also a western. The actor dosen't act, he becomes the character. The rest of the cast were superb as well. Olivia De Havaland played such a wholesome women. That you'd want to marry her knowing you'd last forever with her. Alan's son played his son in the film, and playing a mute boy made you think that maybe he couldn't speak. He later of course married Cheryl Ladd from Charlie's Angels series. A nice story without CGI effects and explosions and lots of unnecessary sex.

These are storybook stories that embed in peoples minds. Films from this era have been remembered for 70-80 years. How many films from last year can you recall.

Although young David Ladd had actually made a brief appearance in his father's western The Big Land the year before, it was decided that David would make a featured debut in this family picture about a father and son roughing it in post Civil War America.

Alan Ladd, late of the Confederate Army, and a widower has searched for and found his son in an orphanage in Pennsylvania. The Yankee soldiers took him and other kids left without homes to northern orphanages. In David's case he's lost his voice due to the traumatic shock of barely escaping the fire from a Union Army shell that burned down his home and killed his mother while Dad was in the army.

They're together now and working their way west. They run afoul of Dean Jagger and his roughneck sons in Illinois, but make friends of spinster farm lady Olivia DeHavilland and Quaker doctor Cecil Kellaway.

David has a sheepdog who could be valuable. And his father has some critical decisions to make about how to pay for an operation that might cure his son's vocal paralysis.

The casting by Alan Ladd of his son David was a stroke of good fortune as the chemistry between the real father and son proved to be a winner. Also Dean Jagger as the one armed sheepherder who has designs on Olivia's land was also very good and against type.

Playing Jagger's two sons are Tom Pittman and Harry Dean Stanton. Stanton, God Bless Him, is still around today, a very highly respected character actor who never seemed to lack for work. As for Tom Pittman, he was killed in a car crash while this film was out in theaters. John Mitchum in his memoirs Them Ornery Mitchum Boys, spoke very highly of Pittman, said he had a solid career ahead of him. He also described a harrowing experience where Pittman was missing for several days before police found him and his car and the bottom of a ravine where they had gone off the road.

This film marked a reunion of Olivia DeHavilland with Michael Curtiz who directed a whole bunch of her films at Warner Brothers back when she was a young leading lady and favorite leading lady of Errol Flynn. Olivia is older now and delivers a good performance as the wise and compassionate farm woman who takes in the Ladds.

With Ladd also producing and starring in this with his younger son, The Proud Rebel is a good family film in every sense of the word.

This is the perfect movie-for-the whole-family which respects its audience, which is rarely the case in today's production aimed at the children's market which substitute heart and soul for special effects .

The screenplay is derivative and looks like a cross between "Shane " and "Lassie come home" ,but it does not matter ;there's a good chemistry between Alan Ladd and his son in real life :the boy does a very good job , particularly in the scene when he searches the empty farm ; and what a pleasure to see the great Olivia De Havilland directed by Curtiz after all these years !