The Legend of Tom Dooley

Michael Landon is Tom Dooley, in charge of a Confederate cavalry unit who have just killed some Union soldiers.... only the war is over. This makes it murder, because no one believes him, except his girl, Jo Morrow, who marries him. But the law and the Union Army are still after him.

It's a decent little movie made to take advantage of the Kingston Trio's recording of the song, It was a popular North Carolina folk song by this point, but it was based on the murder of Laura Foster by Tom Dula; he, like Landon in this movie, was a Confederate veteran. The case attracted national attention as an early case of a crime of passion. Dula's lover, Anna Melton was implicated, but Dula, in a letter written just before his death, took sole responsibility.

It was Landon's fourth big screen appearance. He would make more over the years, but his career was consumed by television. He died in 1991, aged 54.