The Tall Stranger (1957)

One of my all time favorites.

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Good start, but then it gets ruined

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Most reviews characterize this Louis L'Amour-based film as an average western. However, by me, no picture featuring Virginia Mayo, especially in several low-cut dresses, is going to be blah run of the mill fodder. We don't usually associate Virginia with Westerns, but this is the 5th western I've seen, in which she was the leading lady, and not simply a saloon floosy. She had her tomboy side, exhibited in some of these films, as well as her inherent talent as eye candy. Some years before this film, she costarred with Joel McCrea, as she does here, in the acclaimed "Colorado Territory". Here, as Ellen, along with her small son, she's part of a wagon train supposedly heading for CA. She helps revive saddle tramp Ned Bannon(Joel McCrea) who happened to stick is nose in the wrong place, discovering a small cattle herd, which he later surmised represented the 84 head missing from Hardy Bishop's spread, Bishop being his half brother. Nearly dead of a gunshot wound and thirst, Ellen nursed him back to health on a bed in her small prairie schooner. She later feeds Bannon a cock and bull story about her background as a Civil War widow. Much later, she admits that she never had a husband, and had been a saloon girl floozy, as oily Mexican rustler Zarata claims. Zarata encounters her bathing in the river, and tries to rape her as she dresses. Bannon happens along in the nick of time to break it up. Oily Mort Harper joined the train late but, with his charismatic extrovert personality, soon became the de facto leader of the train, rerouting it southward toward verdant Bishop Valley, Colorado Territory. He talks up the advantages of settling in this valley. In contrast, Bannon tells them this land is all taken and there's no through route westward, but they have deaf ears to that message. Clearly, Harper has some ulterior motive in talking up Bishop Valley. Later, we discover that Harper is in cahoots with the cattle rustlers, headed by oily Zarata. Apparently, their plan is to engineer a land war between Bishop and the wagoneers, hoping they will mostly kill each other off, then the rustlers will kill or intimidate the remainder to leave the valley for them. Clearly , the rustlers are taking a chance that their plan will pan out as hoped. Initially, Bishop hated Bannon, blaming him for the death of his no-good son, executed for his part in Quantrill's raiders. But, gradually, Bishop warms up to Bannon's strategies, realizing that Bannon is trying to diffuse the animosity between him and the settlers in a peaceful way. Eventually, there's a shootout between Bishops men + Bannon vs. the rustlers + some wagoneers. This isn't what the rustlers planned for themselves, and the leaders, along with others are killed. According to standard formula, Bishop and Zarata kill each other, albeit by different methods. Naturally, Bannon and Harper have a final confrontation. Since Bishop left no kin aside from Bannon, presumably, he is now the owner of this valley. He tells the wagoneers (and especially Ellen) that they can stay if they wish, conditions not specified.This film presently is viewable at YouTube.

Peaceful Joel McRae is riding along minding his own business, stopping to share some water with his horse, when -- BANG -- the horse is killed and -- BANG -- McRae catches a bullet right in the retroperitoneal sac. Stunned, he falls, and sees a blurry image of a man emptying McRae's canteen on the ground. Right away, we know that there are some evildoers around.What follows is an ordinary but inoffensive Western with some unusual twists. McRae's wound heals overnight after he is picked up by a wagon train of honest, God fearing sons of the soil. Their leader, James Dobson, obviously a sneak because he wears the tumultuous mustache of a sneak and looks sneaky, is taking them to Bishop's Valley, prime cattle land owned by McRae's hot-headed, burly half brother, Barry Kelley. There is an ongoing feud between McRae and Kelley.It becomes clear that the wagon train's leader plans to start a range war between Kelley and the aspiring farmers. The goal is to have them kill each other off and take over the lot. Dobson is also in cahoots with the men who shot McRae and his horse, although it's not made clear why they did it.In any case, the plot gets twisted. There are myriad lies and misunderstandings. But a couple of things save the movie from abject mediocrity. Those couple of things include Virginia Mayo's generous bosom, for instance. Her neckline was pretty daring for the period. She was never a bravura actress but she was pretty and was good at tarty roles, as in "The Best Years of Our Lives" and "White Heat." Another redeeming feature is in the casting of traditional "bad guys" as good guys for a change. The brutish Leo Gordon is an island of sanity in the Bishop Ranch's higher echelon. Michael Pate, usually a vile Indian, is a sympathetic ranch hand with some medical talent. Michael Ansara is stuck with the role of the handsome, oily, treacherous Mexican villain, despite his Syrian ancestry. He's fine in the role, as long as he doesn't have to produce any extended utterances.And although I'm not a gun freak it's nice to see that the property department came up with Henry repeating rifles instead of the later Winchesters, this being the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. A minor thing, true, but it reflects at least a little care on someone's part. The fist fights are brutal and the bruises don't disappear from one scene to the next.That there is a final shoot out should come as no surprise, but the ending leaves a few loose ends. (Who gets the ranch?)

A pleasing Western, with a little more grit in it than is usually found in one of the 1950s. It starts with Zarata's brutally shooting of an innocent onlooker - the hero Ned Bannon - then emptying his water bottle and leaving him to die, Hardy's beating up his ranch-hand who didn't prevent his cattle being rustled, Ellen's (distant) nude bathe, and then her attempted rape - and she also has a "past".It was a little difficult to follow Hardy's changes in personality: his over-harsh treatment of his ranch-hand, his threatening of Ned, followed by him accepting him back into the ranch after a fist-fight, then the change of heart after Ellen's son plaintive question, "Why do you hate us"? Virgina Mayo is as eye-catching as ever, and Leo Gordon shows a great deal of screen personality. I've a feeling that McCrea had at least seven bullets in his six-shooter in the final showdown, but I'll leave others to do their own count.It was nice to see James Dobson on the big screen; his filmography suggests a good career, but I remember him best as a trooper in the old 1950s TV series "Boots and Saddles".

"The Tall Stranger" is an enjoyable Cinemascope colour Western starring Joel McCrea. McCrea's work in Westerns is not as celebrated as that of John Wayne, Gary Cooper and James Stewart, but to connoisseurs, he is one of the masters of the genre. Like many of the movie "greats", McCrea never seemed to be acting - which is probably why he was underrated - but his face always let the audience know what his character was thinking. As with Gary Cooper, there was something about Joel McCrea that made him a "natural" for Westerns, even though his early work was in comedies and dramas.While on his way to see his estranged brother at the end of the civil war, Ned Bannon (Joel McCrea) is bushwhacked for no apparent reason by Zarata (Michael Ansara) and is left for dead. He is rescued and revived by settlers bound for California. The settlers are planning to pass through land owned by Ned's brother Hardy (Barry Kelley). Ned warns them that his brother will attack them and that there is no trail beyond anyway, but the settlers' leader Harper (George Neiss) dismisses his warnings. Even more mysteriously, Harper encourages the settlers not to proceed to California but to build their homes on Hardy's land. It it as though Harper wants a war between Hardy and the settlers, but why? "The Tall Stranger" tells its story briskly. The gun fights are noisy and the fist fights are savage. Very admirably, although many of the characters are good-natured, there is no sentimentality in the movie until suddenly, out of the blue, comes a moment of real sentimentality - and it works. It has real impact! Two of the settlers, a young woman (Virginia Mayo) and her son, have taken refuge with Ned in a barn owned by Hardy. Hardy is planning to ambush the settlers to drive them off his land. Ned tries to reason with him to no avail. He points to the woman and her son, and asks Hardy what threat are they to him. Hardy blusters that he did not invite them onto his land, and that he is going ahead with his intended massacre. The boy goes over to Hardy, looks up him with a child's trusting eyes and asks him why he hates them. Hardy looks down at the boy . . . . . and his face crumbles. It's outrageous! It's a blatant tug at our heart strings - and it works! It's the emotional high point of the movie."The Tall Stranger" has a strong cast. Unfortunately, Virginia Mayo as the love interest has a token female role which contributes nothing to the plot. For some reason, Virginia Mayo antagonised quite a few film-lovers in the 40s and 50s, but she was always a perfectly adequate and decorative leading lady, and is so here. The supporting cast is interesting because three actors who usually played villains in the 1950s, play likable characters in "The Tall Stranger". That most forceful actor, Leo Gordon, for once plays an out-and-out good guy: Hardy's loyal and sensible right hand man. Whit Bissell who normally played worms and weasels here plays a friendly and obliging settler - and does it well. Ray Teal who often played sly characters with dishonourable ulterior motives, plays an amiable and slightly simple settler. Only Michael Ansara, a regular villain in '50's movies, remains true to form. Zarata not only murders people: he tries rape as well."The Tall Stranger" is not a well-known film, and it is unlikely that it will make it onto DVD, but if it does, I will buy my copy immediately.