Author Archives: Nicholas Chennault

About Nicholas Chennault

Nicholas Chennault was raised on a ranch in the mountains of Idaho, not too far from an Indian reservation. A history major in college, he retains a fondness for western and Native American history, especially that relating to the Rocky Mountains, the Great Basin and the northern plains. He continues to find new movies to watch, including particularly westerns. He thinks the cinematic art form of westerns is due for another cycle of revival.

The Walking Hills

Nicholas Chennault ~ January 24, 2016

The Walking Hills—Randolph Scott, John Ireland, Ella Raines, William Bishop, Edgar Buchanan, Josh White, Jerome Courtland, Arthur Kennedy, Charles Stevens (1949; Dir: John Sturges)

The enigmatic title of this treasure-hunting noir western set in modern times (ca. 1950) refers to a large area of dunes that move around in strong winds. An 1852 wagon train supposed to have been full of gold was been lost there, and in a back room card game in Calexico, young Johnny (Jerome Courtland) refers to having seen what might be a line of wagons out in the sand. Old Willy (grizzled former dentist Edgar Buchanan) supplies the legend, and it is determined that everybody in the room must go, lest anybody staying behind later follow with his own search party and cut them out.

They are soon joined by Chris Jackson (Ella Raines), who works at a local lunch counter and has romantic history with two members of the group. Aside from Old Willy, the most experienced hand is Jim Carey (Randolph Scott), a rancher and horse breeder, who brings along a mare he expects to foal at any time. He supplies the expedition with horses, wrangled by his Indian hand Cleve (Charles Stevens). Chris and Jim were a romantic item before she left him for rodeo rider/gambler Shep/Dave (William Bishop). Shep in turn abandoned her in the rain in Denver.

Jim Carey (Randolph Scott) is the center, figuratively and visually, of the group of gold hunters.

Frazee (John Ireland) is a private detective who was pursuing Shep but is now more interested in gold. He has a gun and a heliograph, with which he signals a confederate in the foothills. Bits of backstory are told in flashback, such as the fact that Shep had been in a card game in Denver that resulted in an accidental death, for which he is now wanted by the law. That’s why he left Chris in Denver. Johnny sees Frazee burying something and jumps him; he is shot by Frazee and initially thought to be paralyzed. Chris insists that Jim get Johnny to a doctor, but Jim can’t leave his mare and thinks that Johnny won’t make it anyway. He doesn’t, although he supplies a couple more bits of information before his demise.

[Spoilers follow.] Old Willy discovers a wagon, giving the group new energy. But there’s no gold in the wagon, and the band is hit by a sand storm, during which Frazee battles Shep, Chalk (Arthur Kennedy) and Jim with shovels and fists before Chalk shoots Frazee with his own gun. Jim scrambles to round up the scattered horses in the storm, while the others seek cover. When the storm passes, the wagon train stands revealed, but with no gold. Shep takes off to turn himself in and sort things out; Jim gives Chris one of the few remaining horses to follow him. And he forces Old Willy to reveal that he has in fact found $10,000 in gold, which he will have to split with the survivors. Jim takes the remaining horse and the new foal, saying that he will send horses for them.

Treasure-seekers and romantic triangle Chris (Ella Raines), Shep/Dave (William Bishop) and a shirtless Jim Carey (Randolph Scott).

The cast is very good. Randolph Scott was the biggest star at the time, and he is the moral center of the movie, although he doesn’t seem all that moral at the start. He’s in good physical shape for a man in his 50s, as his shirtless scenes remind us (for more of those, see him in Carson City). His strong, taciturn role here reminds us of his work ten years later with director Budd Boetticher. Sultry Ella Raines is good as Chris; this may have been the peak of her modest movie career, though. John Ireland was also at the early peak of his long movie and television career following Red River, My Darling Clementine and I Shot Jesse James and before All the King’s Men. Look for Scott and Ireland together again the same year in The Doolins of Oklahoma, a more conventional western. William Bishop was fine in this, but did not have a particularly notable career before his early death at 41. Arthur Kennedy doesn’t have much to do or much camera time. For Edgar Buchanan in another role as a grizzled gold seeker about this time, see him with Glenn Ford in Lust for Gold. Geronimo’s grandson Charles Stevens gets more screen time here than he usually did, and he looks authentic.

Fights break out, mostly centering on private investigator Frazee (John Ireland).

Surprisingly for a relatively short film, this includes a couple of musical interludes by bluesman Josh Smith. Note the camera angles used by director Sturges during those interludes to provide visual interest and prevent things from becoming too static during the songs. The birth of a foal in the desert provides a symbol of hope and renewal when things are going badly.

The classic Treasure of the Sierra Madre had come out the previous year (1948), and this was obviously influenced by the success of that film. It was shot in Death Valley and Lone Pine in beautiful black and white by Charles Lawton, Jr., who later worked with producer Harry Joe Brown and Randolph Scott several more times on the Boetticher westerns. The sandstorm scenes are particularly effective. He also worked with eminent western directors Delmer Daves, including the marvelously shot 3:10 to Yuma, and John Ford.

At a compact 78 minutes, much is revealed by flashback, but not everything. The story is left with a few holes in it, and that appears to be by design. Story and screenplay are by Alan LeMay (Gunfighters, San Antonio, Rocky Mountain, novels for The Searchers and The Unforgiven). This is from early in the career of excellent director John Sturges (Escape from Fort Bravo, Bad Day at Black Rock, Last Train from Gun Hill, The Magnificent Seven, Hour of the Gun et al.). It is not as polished as some of his later work, but it is well worth watching (and even re-watching), although it can be hard to find

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Night Passage

Nicholas Chennault ~ January 16, 2016

Night Passage—James Stewart, Audie Murphy, Dan Duryea, Jay C. Flippen, Dianne Foster, Elaine Stewart, Brandon De Wilde, Hugh Beaumont, Robert Wilke, Paul Fix, Olive Carey, Jack Elam, Chuck Roberson (1957; Dir: James Neilson)

This is the movie that broke up the Anthony Mann-James Stewart partnership. Beginning in 1950 director Mann and leading man Stewart had revitalized both westerns generally and Stewart’s career specifically with five westerns: Winchester ’73, Bend of the River, The Naked Spur, The Far Country and The Man from Laramie. (They had also made three non-westerns together.) Mann and Stewart had planned to work together on this one, although neither thought the script was strong enough. Mann also thought Stewart and Audie Murphy were too different to be believable as brothers, he didn’t think much of Murphy’s acting skills generally, and he was not fond of the continual emphasis on Stewart’s accordion. Stewart liked the idea of being able to show off his accordion skills (although all his accordion-playing in the film was later dubbed in by a more expert musician). So Mann left the production to go make The Tin Star, Stewart stayed, and the two never worked together again.

At the start of the film, Grant McLaine (James Stewart) is scraping by playing his accordion for change. He had once been a troubleshooter for the railroad but had been fired when he let an outlaw escape. Now Kimball (Jay C. Flippen), the railroad’s boss and the older husband of McLaine’s former flame Verna (Elaine Stewart), reluctantly hires McLaine back for one job: to get a $10,000 payroll through to the end of the line, despite Whitey Harbin’s gang. Verna makes it clear she wouldn’t mind resuming their relationship, and McLaine encounters Charlie (Dianne Foster), whom he had known as the long-time girlfriend of the Utica Kid. And he rescues Joey, a kid (Brandon De Wilde) being tormented by Concho (Robert J. Wilke).

Grant McLaine (James Stewart) demonstrates his prowess with the accordion to Joey (Brandon De Wilde).

True to recent form, Whitey Harbin (Dan Duryea) and his gang, including the Utica Kid (Audie Murphy), rob the train. Frustrated at not finding the payroll, they take Kimball’s wife Verna for ransom. McLaine and his accordion show up at the abandoned mining camp where Harbin’s gang holes up, and it develops that McLaine and the Utica Kid are brothers. The Utica Kid (real name: Lee McLaine) was the outlaw Grant McLaine let go five years previously, ruining his career with the railroad. Charlie arrives, too, and McLaine shoots it out with Concho, precipitating a fight with the whole gang.

In the course of the extended gun battle, McLaine sends Verna and the payroll in an ore cart to safety. As he and Charlie trade shots with the gang, the Utica Kid reluctantly joins them. (In general he finds McLaine’s attempts to reform him tiresome.) But we know what traditionally happens to men with conflicted loyalties (see Randolph Scott in Western Union and Robert Preston in Union Pacific, to cite just two examples from railroading/technological westerns). Utica takes a slug from Whitey, but McLaine gets Whitey. In the end, McLaine heads off with Charlie, although they both would seem to need a longer mourning period for the Utica Kid before getting on with any relationship.

Finally on the same side, the Utica Kid (Audie Murphy) and McLaine (James Stewart) shoot it out with Whitey Harbin and his gang.

So was Anthony Mann right? The script is muddled and less than clear, the cast is talented but overlarge, Stewart (six feet three inches tall, 48 years old) and Murphy (five feet five inches tall, 31 years old) don’t seem much like brothers, and the accordion quickly becomes tiresome. On the other hand, Murphy does fairly well in his role. There is interesting interplay between Whitey (thoroughly bad) and the Utica Kid (some bad and some not so bad), who are obviously going to have it out at some point. The movie was not well-received by critics or at the box office, Stewart seemed to blame Mann, and the two never spoke again. Stewart didn’t agree to another western for four years, until he did Two Rode Together with director John Ford (not one of Ford’s best).

Dan Duryea, doing a humorless variation on his Waco Johnny Dean role from Winchester ’73, seems louder, more irritating and generally less successful here. The two female roles are undistinguished, both in the writing and as executed on screen; Charlie, particularly, needed more. There is a lot of talent involved here, but it doesn’t come together well. It’s not really terrible, but not very good, either. It probably would have benefited from an extensive script re-write, ditching the accordion and keeping Mann.

Mann said later, “The story was so incoherent that I said the audience wouldn’t understand any of it. But Jimmy was very set on that film. He had to play the accordion and do a bunch of stunts that actors adore. He didn’t care about the script whatever and I abandoned the production. The picture was a total failure and Jimmy has always held it against me.” Obviously, a clash of egos was involved, as often happens in movie-making. Night Passage was perhaps not so total a failure as that, but Mann’s instincts were mostly right this time.

Shot in color near Silverton, Colorado, at 90 minutes; it was the first film made using the Technirama process. The compact running time doesn’t really allow for enough development of the numerous characters, which may be one reason the women don’t seem all that interesting. The cinematography by William H. Daniels is excellent. The screenplay is by veteran screen writer Borden Chase (Red River, Winchester ’73, Bend of the River, The Far Country, Vera Cruz), and music is by Dimitri Tiomkin (too many westerns and other films to list, including several with John Wayne). Director James Neilson was working mostly in television at the time and had a less-than-distinguished record in movies over his career.

The Lone Hand

Nicholas Chennault ~ January 9, 2016

The Lone Hand—Joel McCrea, Barbara Hale, Alex Nicol, Charles Drake, James Arness, Jimmy Hunt (1953; Dir: George Sherman)

In 1870, widower Zachary Hallock (Joel McCrea) and his young son Joshua (Jimmy Hunt) come to the town of Timberline, looking for a new start. They buy a ranch at a good price and set about fixing it up, making friends with the Skaggs family, especially marriageable daughter Sarah Jean (Barbara Hale) and her young brother Daniel. As their first harvest comes in, they buy a couple of riding horses from amiable horse trader George Hadley (Charles Drake) for a wagon load of grain. Zachary and Sarah Jean are married, and she moves in.

Timberline is also plagued by a band of outlaws. As Joshua is delivering the grain to Hadley, shots from ambush spook his horse and the grain is dumped into a creek and lost. The slippery-seeming Varden brothers (Alex Nicol and James Arness) approach Zachary with an invitation to join them in a robbery. They refer to a shadowy big boss, who gives them the information on which their robberies are planned. It works out profitably enough, but Sarah Jean and Joshua wonder about Zachary’s unexplained absences on more jobs. As Joshua follows Zachary, he is spotted by one of the Vardens (James Arness), who traps Joshua by the river until Varden slips, falls in and is drowned.

Sarah Jean (Barbara Hale) thinks new husband Zachary (Joel McCrea) has been less than forthcoming.

Zachary is to bring the mules up for a final big score (robbery of a mule train of gold), where he meets the big boss: George Hadley, the horse trader and head of the local regulators. As Zachary is captured, he is rescued, and the robbery is thwarted by the Timberline regulators, alerted by Sarah Jean. It turns out that Zachary was a Pinkerton agent and was undercover with the gang until he could identify the real leader. And now he, Sarah Jean and Joshua can live happily ever after.

Among Joel McCrea westerns of the early 1950s, this obscure one is not one of the most effective. It depends on a gimmick, with the movie being mostly narrated by Joshua from a position of partial ignorance. Although the movie is not long (just 80 minutes), the gimmick is worn out before it is done. Barbara Hale is competent and pleasant to look at, but not terribly charismatic. (See her also as Randolph Scott’s fiancée in 7th Cavalry.) Alex Nicol, who plays the surviving Varden brother, is a better and more interesting bad guy in both Dawn at Socorro and The Man From Laramie. The river into which James Arness falls to his death is the same one (the Las Animas) used to good effect in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Charles Drake is so smooth and amiable as George Hadley that we know he must be the leader of the outlaws, so that development isn’t really much of a surprise. If you are a particular fan of Joel McCrea (and I am), you may want to see this for the sake of completeness. Although it’s pleasant enough fare, it may not be worth seeking out otherwise. For other McCrea westerns from this period particularly featuring him in a parental role, see Saddle Tramp and Cattle Drive.

George Sherman was a journeyman director who moved more into television work in the later 1950s and 1960s. He made quite a few westerns of which his best may be a late one: Big Jake (1971) with John Wayne. Story is by Irving Ravetch. Shot in color around Durango and Moses Lake, Colorado, with good cinematography and excellent scenery. Cinematography is by Maury Gertsman and music by Joseph Gershenson and Henry Mancini (uncredited).

The Wonderful Country

Nicholas Chennault ~ December 31, 2015

The Wonderful Country—Robert Mitchum, Julie London, Pedro Armendariz, Gary Merrill, Albert Dekker, Victor Mendoza, Satchel Paige (1959; Dir: Robert Parrish)

In the 1950s, Julie London was known primarily as a sultry singer, but she also made three westerns: Saddle the Wind (1958), with Robert Taylor; Man of the West (1958), with Gary Cooper; and this one with Robert Mitchum. The story involves another of Robert Mitchum’s adventures in Mexico (e.g. Bandido and The Wrath of God), or rather back and forth between Mexico and the U.S., as he tries to sort out his loyalties.

Mitchum plays Martin Brady, an American who has long been working in Mexico as a pistolero for the Castro family—specifically for Cipriano Castro. As the movie opens, he is delivering silver pesos to a German merchant named Sterner across the Rio Grande. In a dusty border town on the U.S. side, his horse (a big black Andalusian stallion named Lágrimas—Spanish for “tears”) is spooked and throws him, breaking his leg. As he is laid up for two months, he makes a number of acquaintances, most of whom have their own agendas for him. And he begins to feel that he’d like to stay on the U.S. side.

Martin Brady (Robert Mitchum) gets his broken leg set.

Brady initially fled Texas when his father was killed, and he in turn shot the killer. But the local Texas Ranger authority (Albert Dekker), who would like to recruit him as a ranger, tells him that it was long ago now, and that most who know about it think he did a good thing. The military commander at Fort Jefflin, Major Stark Colton (Gary Merrill), wants to form a joint venture with the Castros to hunt the Apaches who strike back and forth across the border. Mrs. Helen Colton obviously hasn’t much attraction to her own husband, and Brady hears scuttlebutt about her affairs in Missouri. As he thinks about staying, he attends a social gathering at the fort. While he’s avoiding becoming involved with Mrs. Colton, a hardcase (played by Chuck Roberson, John Wayne’s favorite stand-in) picks a fight with a German friend of Brady’s and Brady is forced to kill him.

He then flees south of the border, where he finds that he is in trouble because the guns never made it back to the Castros while Brady was laid up. Cipriano Castro (Pedro Armendariz) is now the governor in the capital city, but the Castro brothers no longer trust each other. As Major Colton visits the capital and forms an alliance with Cipriano, Brady dallies with Mrs. Colton but is interrupted when Cipriano orders him to kill the other Castro brother—the general Marcos (Victor Mendoza). Brady refuses and flees the city, but now neither Cipriano nor Marcos trusts him. He flees north, with his pursuit being led astray by a friend.

Martin Brady (Robert Mitchum) and the major’s wife (Julie London) try to come to terms with their mutual attraction.

The American force is now 100 miles deep in Mexico, but Marcos succeeds in assassinating his brother and repudiates the alliance. Major Colton is mortally wounded in an encounter with Apaches, but Brady manages to retrieve the stolen wagon of rifles. Colton dies, and Mrs. Colton tells Brady that if he wants her he’ll have to find her in the U.S. Nearing the Rio Grande, Lágrimas is shot by a pursuer sent by Marcos Castro. Brady kills the pursuer, but is forced to shoot Lágrimas as well, symbolic of killing his past life. He leaves his sombrero and gun by the horse’s body and heads across the Rio Grande.

Some have referred to this as an “existential western,” as Brady tries to figure out where he belongs, if anywhere. Based on a novel by Tom Lea (who has a cameo as a barber), the story is slow developing in its first half but picks up speed as Brady returns to Mexico. At only 98 minutes, some of the characters and their competing agendas seem underdeveloped. Mrs. Colton herself doesn’t really come alive as a character, as she might have with a little more development. Without having read the novel, I’m guessing it probably works a little better than the movie in some respects. Robert Mitchum, in his world-weary mode, is the primary reason to watch this movie, although it’s fun to see baseball pitcher Satchel Paige in his only movie role as a buffalo soldier sergeant. Mitchum was also the executive producer.

Martin Brady (Robert Mitchum) and a sergeant (Satchel Paige) find the stolen rifles.

Shot in color on location in Durango and Guanajuato, Mexico, the movie looks good, especially in a high definition print. Director Parrish also did Saddle the Wind, but his career was nothing remarkable. The “wonderful country” of the title is presumably Mexico—wonderful, perhaps, but dangerous.

Belle Starr

Nicholas Chennault ~ November 20, 2015

Belle Starr (also known as Belle Starr, The Bandit Queen)—Gene Tierney, Randolph Scott, Dana Andrews, Shepperd Strudwick, Chill Wills, Olin Howland, Louise Beavers (1941; Dir: Irving Cummings)

Early in her career, the beautiful Gene Tierney appeared in three westerns among her first four films: The Return of Frank James (1940), with Henry Fonda, Hudson’s Bay (1941) with Paul Muni, and this, with Randolph Scott and Dana Andrews. Although they were all based on historical persons or events, they had precious little historical accuracy in them. In particular, this depiction of the west’s most famous female outlaw has almost nothing to do with the historical person, playing her as a kind of Scarlett O’Hara in Missouri after the Civil War.

Scarlett, er, Belle Shirley (Gene Tierney), is a Confederate sympathizer with a lot of unused feistiness as the war ends. We see the family home as a large-scale southern plantation, which was probably pretty rare in Missouri. She shows her canniness by tricking ne’er-do-well thief Jasper Tench (Olin Howland) out of a stolen horse. Her brother Edward (Shepperd Strudwick) returns from the war, as does former romantic interest Thomas Crail (Dana Andrews), now a major in the Union army and the regional military authority. Crail is seeking former Missouri border guerillas who have not surrendered, such as Sam Starr (Randolph Scott).

Outlaw Sam Starr (Randolph Scott) and southern sympathizer Belle Shirley (Gene Tierney) seem to be getting along well.

Belle helps Starr escape Crail’s clutches, and Crail is obliged by the occupation rules to burn down her mansion. She flees to join Starr’s rebellion, and they fall in love and are married. Meanwhile, Starr’s rebellion continues to grow in size. Among the new recruits are the Cole brothers from Texas, said to have ridden with Quantrill during the war. The Coles have fewer scruples than Starr, and they influence him to move more in the direction of robbery and murder. Belle’s brother Edward comes to warn her about these new activities of Starr’s, and the Coles gun him down. Belle gives back Starr’s ring and leaves.

Meanwhile, Starr plans to show up at a speech of the carpetbagger governor as a show of strength. Belle discovers that it is a trap, with Crail’s men waiting for Starr, and she rides to warn him. As she does, she is shot from ambush by Tench for the reward on her head. The shot is taken as a warning by Starr, and the raid is aborted. But Starr gives himself up when he hears about Belle’s fate. He and Belle’s mammy (Louise Beavers) see the body, but claim that it is not Belle so the venal Tench won’t get the reward. Crail knows as well as they do that the body is Belle’s, but he plays along.

Gene Tierney as Belle Starr; and the real Belle Starr in a full-length studio portrait probably taken in Fort Smith, Arkansas, in the early 1880s.

Tierney had marvelous facial bone structure and extraordinary beauty, but she was not a great actress and this is not her best work. (See Laura, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and perhaps Leave Her to Heaven for that.) The writing makes Belle often seem angrily stupid, and the whole thing makes little sense. Scott and Andrews are good enough, and Chill Wills makes an early appearance as the outlaw Blue Duck (a strangely religious outlaw), otherwise best known on film as the principal villain in Lonesome Dove. But none of the characters in this film bear much resemblance to their historical counterparts.

The film has distinguished writing credits, with a screenplay by Lamar Trotti (Young Mr. Lincoln, Drums Along the Mohawk, The Ox-Bow Incident, Yellow Sky) and story by Niven Busch (Duel in the Sun, Pursued, The Furies). It just goes to show that otherwise good writers can come up with an occasional bomb. Director Irving Cummings had been an actor from the earliest days of the movies, but was not terribly notable as a director, having done a number of unremarkable films, along with uncredited work on 1939’s Jesse James. Music is by experienced movie composer Alfred Newman; the title music had been composed for John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln two years earlier. The film was shot in color (so it had a good budget for 1941), at the Iverson Ranch in Chatsworth, California, at 87 minutes.

For a much more interesting depiction of Belle Starr on film, see Pamela Reed in Walter Hill’s The Long Riders (1980). Although the real Belle Starr was ugly as a mud fence, she has been played on film not only by the glamorous Tierney, but also by Jane Russell, Elsa Martinelli and Elizabeth Montgomery, among others–usually in highly fictionalized form.

Go West, Young Lady

Nicholas Chennault ~ November 5, 2015

Go West, Young Lady—Penny Singleton, Glenn Ford, Ann Miller, Charles Ruggles, Onslow Stevens, Jed Prouty, Allen Jenkins (1941; Dir: Frank R. Strayer)

For current fans of westerns, the obvious star of this western musical comedy would be the young Canadian actor Glenn Ford. But at the time this was made in 1941, he was not the biggest star; first billing went to Penny Singleton, then known for having appeared as Blondie in a series of slight films based on the Dagwood and Blondie comic strips. (She and Arthur Lake would make 28 of them between 1938 and 1950, including one with Glenn Ford in 1940; many were directed by Frank Strayer.) Here, she is Belinda “Bill” Pendergast, the young lady of the title.

The once-tomboyish Bill is headed west to join her uncle Joe Pendergast (Charles Ruggles) in the lawless town of Headstone, now terrorized by the outlaw gang of Killer Pete. In the stage with her is Tex Miller (Glenn Ford), a federal marshal being sent as temporary sheriff to clean things up in Headstone. When the stage is attacked by Indians, Tex is surprised to find Bill outshooting him in the stage’s defense (like Mae West in the previous year’s My Little Chickadee). Uncle Joe owns the Crystal Palace saloon, where the principal entertainment (and most of the movie’s musical numbers, along with some anachronistic but well-executed tap dancing) are provided by Lola (Ann Miller). He is shocked to find that Bill Pendergast is a young woman. Unfortunately, Lola and Bill do not get along well.

Young Belinda “Bill” Pendergast (Penny Singleton) is surprisingly adept with a gun.

Uncle Joe owes more and more of his saloon to his financial backer, Hannegan (Onslow Stevens), but both of them seem to be losing money to Killer Pete. [Spoilers follow.] Unknown to almost everyone, however, Hannegan is in fact Killer Pete. Tex does his best to bring a little law and order. As Tex keeps fighting with bad guys who are bigger than he, in a running gag Bill tries to help him but always ends up bashing Tex. He warns her off (to no effect) in one fight. “Don’t hit him! It’ll be me!” It always is.

Bill (Penny Singleton) and Lola (Ann Miller) don’t get along. Eventually physical hostilities erupt.

Elements of this are reminiscent of Destry Rides Again, from two years earlier, with the corrupt town, the diffident-seeming (but actually forceful in his way) young lawman, and the exuberant fight between two women (Marlene Dietrich and Una Merkel in Destry, Singleton and Miller here). Other than those references, the writing here is desultory and the comedy predictable, with pies in faces, law and order prevailing against Killer Pete, and the young lovers getting together after multiple misunderstandings. Like Belle of the Yukon, this is edging more into musical comedy than western. Along with all the other musical numbers (several written by Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin), one is provided by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys.

After numerous altercations, misdirected punches and the occasional pie in the face, finally the young lovers (Penny Singleton and Glenn Ford) get together.

Shot in black and white at the Iverson ranch in Chatsworth, California, at only 70 minutes. Not available on DVD in the U.S. Not to be confused with Go West, Young Girl, a 1975 made-for-television movie with Karen Valentine. Or with the better-known Go West, Young Man, 1936, with Mae West, Warren William and Randolph Scott.

Cattle Empire

Nicholas Chennault ~ November 1, 2015

Cattle Empire—Joel McCrea, Gloria Talbott, Don Haggerty, Phyllis Coates, Bing Russell, Richard Shannon, Paul Brinegar (1958; Dir: Charles Marquis Warren)

In the opening scenes of this late Joel McCrea cattle drive story, John Cord (McCrea) is being dragged through the streets of Hamilton by irate citizens as, bit by bit, his backstory emerges. He has been just let out of Yuma Territorial Prison in Arizona after serving a five-year sentence. An experienced trail boss, his men had gotten out of control and trashed Hamilton, resulting in extensive property destruction and a few deaths. Cord himself had ended it in a brawl with local cattle baron Ralph Hamilton (Don Haggerty), from which Hamilton had emerged blind but married to Cord’s one-time fiancée Janice (Phyllis Coates) after Cord had been sent off to prison.

Now Hamilton has sent for Cord for his trail boss skills, at a time when Cord has few other choices. The town has never recovered and is on the verge of blowing away in a drought. Hamilton thinks Cord is tough enough to get a combined local herd of 4000 cattle to market at Ft. Clemson, at a time when water is even harder than usual to find. They have to get there first to win an army contract. There’s also a rival herd managed by another cattle baron Garth (Richard Shannon), which Cord also agrees to lead. It’s not clear what Cord’s game is, other than various unresolved feelings of revenge—against Ralph Hamilton, Janice Hamilton and various of the townsfolk. Aside from Ralph Hamilton, the only citizens who treat Cord decently are the aging brothers George Washington Jeffrey (Hal K. Dawson) and Thomas Jefferson Jeffrey (Paul Brinegar), who join the trail drive along with G.W.’s granddaughter Sandy (Gloria Talbott) and a number of other more or less resentful cattlemen.

John Cord (Joel McCrea) drinks with the Jeffrey brothers (Hal Dawson and Paul Brinegar), two of the few friends he has left in town.

As matters get sorted out, Cord drops out of Garth’s drive, telling him to head for Horsethief Creek because there’s no water at the Dismal River. Garth suspects that Cord is now trying to distract him and heads for the Dismal; in fact, Cord has been straight with Garth and is taking the Hamilton herd to Horsethief Creek. Slowly relations with the Hamiltons and the townsfolk develop. Hamilton offers Cord his ranch and cattle empire (and even Janice, by implication) for getting them through. Janice in some ways regrets her faithlessness to Cord, and it is unclear how far matters between them go before the ultimate resolution. It looks like they go quite a way, which was unusual for both a 1950s western and for a Joel McCrea character. Sandy evinces some romantic interest in Cord, even though he seems significantly too old for her.

Needless to say, Cord gets the herd through. [Spoilers follow.] But Garth, thinking Cord was trying to slow down his herd, went to the DIsmal River and lost his herd. He has now hired gunhands to take away the Hamilton herd at Indian Pass, before they can get to Fort Clemson. Ralph Hamilton confesses that five years ago, when Cord beat his herd to market, it was he who had turned Cord’s hands loose on the town and started the fight with Cord. Now Cord has to save the herd from Garth’s gunmen and shoot it out in traditional fashion with Garth himself. As he leaves, it seems that rather than taking Ralph’s offer Cord will head for new ground in the northwest… and will come back for Sandy.

It takes a tough trail boss (Joel McCrea) to get the herd to market.

Director Charles Marquis Warren was known more for his screenwriting than for his directorial abilities, although he did direct a few other westerns, of which Trooper Hook (also starring McCrea) and 1956’s Tension at Table Rock (with Richard Egan) are probably the best. He then moved almost entirely into television work. That this is worth watching at all is due almost entirely to Joel McCrea, who’s a little more morally evasive than normal for him; otherwise the writing is undistinguished and the acting (other than McCrea) is unremarkable. The romantic triangle between McCrea, Coates and Talbott is interesting but seems at least partially unresolved. As noted before, the McCrea-Talbott age difference is obviously significant, but, like Gary Cooper and John Wayne, Joel McCrea could make it work out believably. The story seems unbalanced, with a lot of development of the various Cord-Hamilton-citizenry resentments and motivations and not enough of the actual arduous drive. It might have benefited from another 12-20 minutes of cattle drive, if it was done well. The film obviously utilizes a lot of stock footage during the cattle drive.

The geography of the film is a little hazy. Cord had been in prison at Yuma, making it seem like Arizona Territory. But there are also references to the Staked Plains and to arriving at the Pecos, which sounds like maybe Texas-New Mexico. Fort Clemson, the ultimate destination of the drive, is apparently fictional. Fans of cattle drive westerns will note that there are several of the standard vicissitudes of trail drives missing here: no stampedes with related deaths, no bad storms and bad weather interludes, no Indian raids and such. That’s one reason the drive itself seems a bit light. McCrea gives a speech about how the hardest part of the drive is coming up between them and Horsethief Creek, and, with the next scene cut, the herd’s at Horsethief Creek without any of the hard going. It’s not the best of late McCrea westerns, but he makes it worth watching. Not to be confused with Cattle Drive, another McCrea cattle drive western from earlier in the 1950s. For the greatest of cattle drive westerns, see Lonesome Dove and Red River.

Shot in color in the Alabama Hills around Lone Pine, at 83 minutes. This is not often seen these days, since it’s not available on DVD in the United States. The year following this film, three members of the cast (Paul Brinegar, Steve Raines and Rocky Shahan) joined the television trail drive western Rawhide, with Eric Fleming as trail boss Gill Favor, a young Clint Eastwood as segundo Rowdy Yates, and writer-producer Charles Marquis Warren in control of the series.

The Furies

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 20, 2015

The Furies—Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Huston, Wendell Corey, Judith Anderson, Gilbert Roland, Beulah Bondi, John Bromfield, Thomas Gomez, Blanche Yurka, Albert Dekker, Wallace Ford (1950; Dir: Anthony Mann)

Niven Busch was a well-known novelist and screenwriter during the 1930s and 1940s and into the early 1950s, leaving Hollywood in 1952. Among his non-western screenplays were He Was Her Man (1934) with James Cagney and the original The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) with John Garfield and Lana Turner. But by the 1940s, he was also writing significant westerns, like The Westerner (1940) with Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan and Pursued (1947), one of the early westerns noirs, with Robert Mitchum, Busch’s then-wife Teresa Wright and Judith Anderson. His biggest-selling novels tended to be western sagas with a lot of melodrama, family angst, overtly classical references (like this one, trying to make connections with Greek tragedy) and Freudian overtones. His best-known such novel was Duel in the Sun (1946), made into an overheated potboiler by David O. Selznick. But The Furies was probably the best movie based on his novels, just as it was probably the best of Barbara Stanwyck’s cattle queen sagas from the 1950s (The Maverick Queen, Cattle Queen of Montana, The Violent Men, Forty Guns, et al.). And maybe the best of anybody’s cattle queen movies, although Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar (1954) with Joan Crawford has its partisans, too.

Adversaries T.C. Jeffords (Walter Huston) and Rip Darrow (Wendell Corey) frame Vance Jeffords (Barbara Stanwyck).

Set in New Mexico of the 1870s, the title “The Furies” refers to the self-conscious name of the huge ranch of T.C. Jeffords, as well as to the female deities of vengeance in Greek mythology. The aging Jeffords (Walter Huston in his last role) has long been a law unto himself, now spending most of his time in San Francisco. He put together the cattle empire, sometimes issuing his own scrip (called “TCs”) when money was tight. The best part of his land is referred to as the Darrow Strip, which T.C. acquired through dubious legal means and by killing the Darrow who owned it. There are also “squatters” on Jeffords’ range, most prominently the Herreras, who have lived there for generations. It is not primarily an “Anglos vs. Hispanics” situation, though. The most ardent anti-squatter is Jeffords’ range boss El Tigre (Thomas Gomez), who is obviously of Hispanic origin.

At the beginning of the film, T.C.’s two grown children are waiting for his arrival. The son Clay (John Bromfield) is about to get married; he doesn’t get along with his father and is not the favored child. That would be daughter Vance Jeffords (Barbara Stanwyck), who has more of her father’s aggressive personality and can manage him better. He has promised that she will get The Furies and a $50,000 dowry if she marries some one of whom he approves. At the ball celebrating Clay’s marriage, one of the less desirable attendees is gambler and saloon owner Rip Darrow (Wendell Corey). When Vance is taken with him, he maintains his independence. And when Vance wants to marry him, T.C. offers him the $50,000 dowry if he won’t. Darrow takes the money without blinking and starts a bank in town.

T.C. Jeffords (Walter Huston) and daughter Vance (Barbara Stanwyck) don’t always get along, either.

Vance takes some solace in her long-time “friendship” with Juan Herrera (Gilbert Roland). She is taken aback when T.C. returns from Washington with a widowed companion, Flo Burnett (Judith Anderson). Flo is after independence/money, and T.C. gives her his remaining $50,000. More significantly for Vance, Flo is planning to take over as the lady of The Furies and to sideline Vance, despite T.C.’s promises to Vance. Furious, Vance attacks Flo with scissors, severely gashing her face and causing facial paralysis on one side. Seeking refuge with the Herreras, Vance is followed by T.C. and his men. Using dynamite to shake the Herreras into surrender in their mountain home, T.C. ruthlessly hangs Juan Herrera, and Vance enters her vengeance phase.

Using the $50,000 given to Rip Darrow, Vance travels the west, buying up TCs at a huge discount. She persuades T.C.’s San Francisco bankers to extend the Jeffords loans for another 90 days by going through the banker’s wife, Mrs. Anaheim (Beulah Bondi) and giving T.C. enough time to round up and sell 20,000 cattle.

Vance Jeffords (Barbara Stanwyck) gets ready to attack Flo Burnett (Judith Anderson).

T.C. is desperate enough to try to get back Flo’s $50,000, but in a surprisingly touching scene she refuses now that she’s uglier, lonelier and drinking more. T.C. makes his roundup on time and sells his cattle, only to discover that the buyer is Vance, using his own TCs. So she buys his cattle with worthless scrip, and he’s still broke. Nevertheless, the two make a sort of peace with each other, and Vance plans to marry Rip at last, giving him back the Darrow Strip for his part in the maneuver. As T.C. announces his plans to start over, he is shot down by Juan Herrera’s mother (Blanche Yurka).

Mom Herrera (Blanche Yurka) prepares to take her revenge.

All of this is carried out with tempestuous emotions, overweening hubris, Shakespearean drama and psycho-Freudian father-daughter overtones that never become explicit. On the whole, with all that’s going on in this plot, the film could have been a bit longer; it seems a little compressed at 109 minutes. The cast is excellent, especially Walter Huston (only a couple of years after his Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Treasure of the Sierra Madre) and Barbara Stanwyck. The two seemed to get along well off-screen as well. Huston observed of his co-star, “Barbara Stanwyck loved doing westerns more than anything where she had to dress up frilly and chase after a man. At heart, she’s a cowgirl. Or a cowboy—she’s one of the toughest, most no-nonsense women in this town, and she stopped playing the old cat-and-mouse game years ago.”

Judith Anderson is very good in a small but critical part (see her also in Pursued), and Beulah Bondi in what amounts to a cameo. Gilbert Roland, after almost 30 years in movies since the days of the silents, is always a pleasure to watch, although he seems a little too old for Juan Herrera here. The weakest spot in the cast is Wendell Corey, who usually played forms of policemen (see The Wild North and Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window) and was kind of a stone-faced actor; he doesn’t seem to have the personality or flamboyance to be gambler Rip Darrow.

Gambler-banker Rip Darrow (Wendell Corey) and Vance Jeffords (Barbara Stanwyck) try to work things out.

1950 was a good year for the great director Anthony Mann, who was then making the first of his westerns: Devil’s Doorway, with Robert Taylor, Winchester ’73 with James Stewart, and this. They’re all worth watching, and you can’t consider you’ve seen the best of westerns without Mann’s work from this period. This one shows some of his noir-ish tendencies, with lots of wild night skies and dark shadows, especially with the frequent shots of the sign over the main gate of the ranch against the night sky. The best way to watch The Furies (other than on the big screen) is on the 2008 Criterion Collection DVD, with the usual Criterion interesting extras and excellent print transfer. The screenplay is by Charles Schnee. Shot in black and white, mostly on location in Arizona by Victor Milman. Music is by Franz Waxman.

For other western family sagas in addition to Duel in the Sun (1946) and The Furies, see The Sea of Grass (1947), with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, and, more recently, Legends of the Fall (1994), with Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt and Aidan Quinn. And maybe even Robert Redford’s A River Runs Through It (1992). For other westerns based on the works of Niven Busch, see Belle Starr (1941), Distant Drums (1951) with Gary Cooper, Budd Boetticher‘s The Man From the Alamo (1953) with Glenn Ford, and The Moonlighter (1953) with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck.

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Last Stand at Saber River

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 16, 2015

Last Stand at Saber River—Tom Selleck, Suzy Amis, Keith Carradine, David Carradine, Tracey Needham, David Dukes, Rachel Duncan, Haley Joel Osment, Harry Carey, Jr., Lumi Cavazos (Made for television, 1997; Dir: Dick Lowry)

A story from Elmore Leonard is usually a good starting point for a western. (See, for example, The Tall T, 3:10 to Yuma [original and remake], Hombre, Valdez Is Coming and Joe Kidd.) In the 1990s and into the early 2000s, Tom Selleck and Sam Elliot appeared in a series of westerns that were initially shown on Ted Turner’s TNT television station, with higher production values than normally seen in that medium. Often they were based on stories from the heyday of westerns in the 1950s and 1960s by such masters as Leonard and Louis L’Amour, but also on classics by writers like Jack Schaefer (Monte Walsh). Tom Selleck not only starred, but often took a production role in getting the movie made, as was the case with this Leonard story from the 1950s.

In early 1865 Paul Cable (Tom Selleck; we seldom hear him called anything but “Cable”) is returning from the Civil War, where he has spent four years riding with Confederate cavalry commander Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. There are multiple references to Fort Pillow in Tennessee in 1864, where Forrest and his men committed an atrocity by gunning down more than 300 Union prisoners, most of them black soldiers. Burned out on the war, Cable just wants to pick up his wife and children in Texas and move back to their ranch in Arizona Territory. Cable’s wife Martha (Suzy Amis) has spent the interim as a schoolteacher and gunsmith, working with her gunsmith father (Harry Carey, Jr. in his final acting role). It’s not easy to put the Cable family back together again. Martha is still traumatized by the death of baby Mary three years ago, by not understanding why (and resenting that) Cable went to fight, by seeing that he’s changed while he’s been away (more willing to kill if necessary) and by being uprooted again. Frictions in the Cable marriage are one of the basic two conflicts that flow through the story.

The Cables (Haley Joel Osment, Suzy Amis and Tom Selleck) try to sort things out, now that Paul Cable is home from the war.

The other involves the Kidstons, a family consisting of two brothers Vern (Keith Carradine) and Duane (David Carradine) and Duane’s free-thinking daughter Lorraine (Tracey Needham). They’re Union sympathizers (Duane had been kicked out of the Union army) who have come to dominate the area while the Cables have been gone. When the Cables approach their own ranch house, they find it occupied by Kidston men and prostitutes; Martha shoots down two of them when they threaten Cable, and she is appalled that she did it.

Cable is jumped by two brothers of one of the deceased men; he kills one and captures the other, but eventually lets him go. He takes his family to the general store, where Edward Janroe (David Dukes), a Confederate veteran himself, promises protection for them. Returning to his cabin, Cable finds Lorraine Kidston there, claiming to have been thrown from her horse. She makes it obvious he can have a dalliance with her; it is less obvious whether the attraction is real, or she’s just making mischief. Cable politely resists in any event.

Daughter of a gunsmith, Martha Cable (Suzy Amis) can both make and shoot guns.

[Spoilers follow.] As news of the end of the war reaches Arizona Territory, Janroe, who has been smuggling British Enfield rifles across the border with Mexico and then sending them east to the Confederate army, volunteers to take the news to Cable. But Janroe seems to have become unhinged by this development. Cable is out working, and in his absence Janroe trashes the Cable cabin. He then stops by the Kidston ranch, and shoots Duane twice, with no witnesses. Vern Kidston thinks it’s obvious that Cable did it.

Cable (Tom Selleck) negotiates with storekeeper Edward Janroe (David Dukes).

When Kidston and his men besiege Cable at his cabin, he’s rescued by Martha taking out yet another of their gunmen. Cable and Vern Kidston finally talk and figure out that Janroe didn’t give Cable the news, and that if he was out that way he might have been the one to shoot Duane. Heading for the Janroe store, they find that Janroe has (a) abducted Cable’s daughter Clare (Rachel Duncan), (b) shot Luz (Lumi Cavazos), his Hispanic mistress, when she tried to stop it, and (c) taken his stock of rifles to the Mexican bandits along the border. Cable and Vern head out in pursuit. The rescue involves an extended chase, Vern shooting Janroe, Cable rescuing his daughter from a runaway wagon, and finally Cable fighting off the bandits and taking a wound himself. Back at the Cable cabin, indications are that there will be peace with the remaining Kidstons and perhaps between Cable and Martha.

Cable (Tom Selleck) is pinned down in the rocks by superior numbers.

Selleck was usually good in these high-quality made-for-television westerns, almost single-handedly bringing back the big hat that was more or less authentic to the time of the story. (Perhaps the best example of a Selleck hat is in Quigley Down Under, which was not made for television.) Both Suzy Amis (near the end of her acting career at only 35) and Tracey Needham have strong female roles well-integrated with the story (unusual for a western); Amis’ character is both harder-edged and more sympathetic. David Dukes makes an effective fanatical one-armed villain. Rachel Duncan and Haley Joel Osment as the Cable children are unusually effective, too. The Carradine brothers most famously starred together in Walter Hill’s The Long Riders (1980) as two of the Younger brothers, but you can also see them together in The Outsider (2002), another made-for-television western.

Keith Carradine as the more sensible Kidston brother Vern; and David Carradine as Duane.

Dick Lowry was a long-time television director, who also worked with Selleck on one of his Jesse Stone police procedurals in 2011. This was shot in New Mexico, around Santa Fe, in color at 96 minutes.

Canyon Passage

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 12, 2015

Canyon Passage—Dana Andrews, Brian Donlevy, Susan Hayward, Patricia Roc, Ward Bond, Hoagy Carmichael, Lloyd Bridges, Andy Devine (1946; Dir: Jacques Tourneur)

Dana Andrews is remembered these days primarily for such modern roles as he played in Laura (1944) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). But he was also in several good westerns, such as The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), Three Hours to Kill (1954), Strange Lady in Town (1955)… and this one.

The movie opens in Portland, Oregon, in 1856. Logan Stuart (Dana Andrews) is a freighter, running strings of pack mules from San Francisco to Portland. While in Portland, he gets paid $7000 and arranges to take Lucy Overmire (Susan Hayward), fiancée of his friend George Camrose (Brian Donlevy), back to George in Jacksonville in southern Oregon. He is also attacked by a robber, whom he thinks to be Honey Bragg (Ward Bond) and with whom he has unpleasant history. The robbery is not successful, and the thief gets away.

Lucy Overmire (Susan Hayward) and Logan Stuart (Dana Andrews) head south for Jacksonville.

On the way south to Jacksonville, they stop at the ranch of Ben Dance (Andy Devine) and his family, where Caroline Marsh (Patricia Roc) is staying. Stuart is attracted to Caroline, but he seems also to have a relationship with Lucy. At a cabin raising, he asks Caroline to marry him and she accepts, although she wants to stay put and is troubled that Logan is so footloose, constantly concentrating on expanding his freighting business.

Arriving at Jacksonville, Stuart fights Bragg and wins. Lucy has been putting off setting a date for her marriage to George, but plans to go through with it after she goes to San Francisco with Logan to get a wedding dress. Meanwhile, George is acting as a banker for miners in Jacksonville. He has also been gambling and losing, and has been covering his losses by stealing from the gold deposited with him. We see that George is also a man of restless affections, not limited to Lucy. Eventually George stands accused of murdering one of his depositors for his gold, and Logan helps him escape before he can be hung.

George Camrose (Brian Donlevy) finally persuades Lucy Overmire (Susan Hayward) to set the date for their wedding.

[Spoilers follow.] As Logan and Lucy head south, they are attacked by Bragg. They are unhurt, but their horses are killed, and they have to walk back to Jacksonville. By that time the Jacksonville miners, led by Johnny Steele (Lloyd Bridges), have found and killed George in their absence. After ambushing Logan, Bragg has also attacked an Indian woman, and now the Indians are torching farms and ranches in retaliation, including Ben Dance’s and Logan’s way stations and general store. Dance is killed and the Indians are after Caroline Marsh, with Logan and the militia also in pursuit. The Indians catch Bragg and take care of him, which seems to satisfy them for the moment. Caroline decides she can’t marry Logan because he won’t settle down in one spot. So Logan heads to San Francisco again to buy more mules to rebuild his operations. And Lucy joins him. They’re better suited to each other than Logan and Caroline were, anyway.

A suspicious Johnny Steele (Lloyd Bridges) speaks for a band of vengeful miners.

Logan Stuart: “There was a lot of good in George.”
Johnny Steele: “He sure panned out no color.”
Logan Stuart: “There’s a thin margin, Johnny, between what could be and what is.”
Johnny Steele: “Yeah. It was thin for you last night. We were of a mind to hang you.”
Logan Stuart: “You see how thin the margin is.”

Based on a story by Ernest Haycox, this is stuffed full of complicated and not-too-predictable plot and romantic triangles, densely populated with a good cast. Dana Andrews plays Logan Stuart with the same stoic independence he did Det. Mark MacPherson in Laura. Susan Hayward, an excellent and often fiery actress, has kind of a generically-written part that doesn’t really allow her to show what she can do. She’s better in Rawhide [1951] and Garden of Evil [1954], both with meatier roles for her when she had become a bigger star.

Ben Dance (Andy Devine) offers Caroline Marsh (Patricia Roc) a little avuncular advice.

Brian Donlevy didn’t always play villains (see him in Billy the Kid [1941] and Cowboy [1958], for example), but at this stage of his career he’s so identified with bad guys (the corrupt saloon owner Kent in Destry Rides Again and the sadistic Sgt. Markov in Beau Geste, as just two examples from 1939) that we don’t trust him from the start. The role of George Camrose calls out instead for somebody like Robert Preston, who specialized during the 1940s in friend-gone-bad roles, in which he established himself as charming first. Ward Bond also has one of his occasional bad guy roles (e.g., The Oklahoma Kid), and he’s very effective. This has one of Andy Devine’s better roles, too, where he is not used simply as a form of comic relief. Hoagy Carmichael plays Hi Linnett, supposedly a small merchant, but mostly there to provide musical interludes, as in To Have and Have Not, and to comment on the action. Carmichael’s song “Ole Buttermilk Sky” got the movie’s only Oscar nomination. Several of the film’s significant events happen off-camera: Bragg’s attack on the Indian maiden, the killing of George by the miners’ mob, the killing of Ben Dance by Indians, etc.

Hoagy Carmichael as minstrel Hi Linnet provides musical interludes, occasional commentary and the film’s only Oscar nomination.

Jacques Tourneur was a good director of westerns, although he wasn’t best known for them in the 1940s. Later on in the 1950s, he made a few of them (Stars in My Crown, Wichita, etc.) with Joel McCrea. Ernest Pascal adapted the Haycox story into a screenplay, with some crisp, sometimes even philosophical, dialogue. Music, except for that provided by Carmichael, is by Frank Skinner. This was filmed on location in Oregon in color (a rarity for westerns in 1946) by Edward Cronjager, so it must have had a significant budget for its time. 92 minutes. As of 2020, a nice blu-ray of this is available from Kino Lorber.

Logan Stuart’s mule train wends its way past Oregon’s Crater Lake.

The title doesn’t seem to mean much; there are no obvious canyons involved. For other “passage” westerns, see Northwest Passage (1940), California Passage (1950), Passage West (1951), Desert Passage (1952) Southwest Passage (1954), Oregon Passage (1957) and Night Passage (1957), which are otherwise unrelated to this one or to each other.

Great Western Movies

An In-Depth Guide to Westerns