The Changing Frontier

Hollywood has recently been cultivating the vogue of the "different" western so energetically that even the "different" westerns are beginning to look alike. Samples:

Saddle Tramp (Universal-International) follows lamely in the footsteps of comedies that spoof the western (The Paleface, A Ticket to Tomahawk), and gives up the trail too soon for its own good.

The saddle tramp (Joel McCrea) is a footloose cowpoke, lazy and carefree enough to be played by Bing Crosby. Circumstances make him responsible for the care & feeding of four orphan boys and a girl (Wanda Hendrix) who is fleeing her lecherous uncle. He reluctantly takes a job with a child-hating rancher (John Mclntire), hides and feeds his charges in the nearby woods. Wanda and the tots (help him with his chores and eventually with the unmasking of a foul plot against the rancher.

The picture's early promise of gentle parody is paid off first in juvenile whimsy and folksiness, finally in a mild flurry of standard ridin' & fightin'. Neither Technicolor nor all the warmth of McCrea's amiable personality can conceal the fact that the film is short on the basic ingredient of any western: action.

Devil's Doorway (M-G-M), like Broken Arrow (TIME, July 31), takes sides with the Indian victims of the white barbarians who won the West. Unlike Arrow, which treated the idea with a fresh story, Doorway is an old-fashioned western at heart, disguised with an unhappy ending and an Indian dubbed in as the hero.

As played by Robert Taylor, the movie's hero could pass only for a Cleveland Indian. Full of good will for his white brothers, and wearing his Congressional Medal of Honor, Taylor rides back from the Civil War to raise cattle on his family's ancient acreage. A villainous, mustachioed lawyer (Louis Calhern) persuades a band of sheep raisers to homestead on Taylor's land, thus compounding two time-honored feuds: sheep v. cattle and settlers v. Indians. A pretty female lawyer (Paula Raymond) with an unrequited yen for Taylor tries for a peaceful agreement.

But nothing can head off bloodshed, which is a good thing for the picture. Director Anthony (Winchester '73) Mann whips up some first-rate shots of furious hand-to-hand fighting and battle scenes featuring the flinging of dynamite sticks as hand grenades. Swarms of sheep disappear in billowing explosions, the Indian stockade is blown to shambles, and it finally takes the U.S. Cavalry to deal Taylor death with honor.

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