Western remake of "Destry Rides Again", starring Audie Murphy, Mari Blanchard, Thomas Mitchell, Lori Nelson and Lyle Bettger.
12-01-1954
1h 35m
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
George Marshall
Production:
Universal International Pictures
Key Crew
Stunts:
Polly Burson
Screenplay:
Edmund H. North
Screenplay:
D.D. Beauchamp
Producer:
Stanley Rubin
Music:
Henry Mancini
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Audie Murphy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Audie Leon Murphy (June 20, 1924 – May 28, 1971) was a fifth grade dropout from an extremely poor family who became the most decorated American soldier of World War II. After the war he became a celebrated movie star for over two decades, appearing in 44 films. He also found some success as a country music composer.
Murphy became the most decorated United States soldier of the war during twenty-seven months in action in the European Theatre. He received the Medal of Honor, the U.S. military's highest award for valor, along with 32 additional U.S. and foreign medals and citations, including five from France and one from Belgium. Murphy's successful movie career included To Hell and Back (1955), based on his book of the same title (1949) . He died in a plane crash in 1971 and was interred, with full military honors, in Arlington National Cemetery. Description above from the Wikipedia article Audie Murphy, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Petite, attractive Mari Blanchard rarely managed to get the lucky breaks. The daughter of an oil tycoon and a psychotherapist, she suffered from severe poliomyelitis from the age of nine, which denied her a hoped-for dancing career. For several years, she worked hard to rehabilitate her limbs from paralysis, swimming and later even performing on the trapeze at Cole Brothers Circus. At the urging of her parents, she then attended the University of Southern California, where she studied international law before dropping out nine units short of a degree. Her university studies did not lead to a career either. Sometime in the late 1940s, she joined the Conover Agency as an advertising model and, at the same time, was promoted by famed cartoonist and writer Al Capp, becoming the inspiration for one of his Li'l Abner characters.
As the result of an advertisement on the back page of the Hollywood Reporter, Mari was signed to a contract with Paramount. However, her early experience in the movie business proved an unhappy one, most of her roles being walk-ons and bit parts. Ten Tall Men (1951), for example, limited her to a token stroll down a street, twirling a parasol and smiling seductively at members of the Foreign Legion. It wasn't until Mari joined Universal that her fortunes improved somewhat, with a co-starring role (opposite Victor Mature) in The Veils of Bagdad (1953). After that, it was all downhill again. Burt Lancaster, co-producer and star (with Gary Cooper of the excellent A-grade western Vera Cruz (1954), had requested Mari as his leading lady, but Universal refused her release to United Artists and forbade her to accept the lucrative role (Denise Darcel ended up getting the part). Mari then lost the lead in a much lesser picture,Saskatchewan (1954), to Shelley Winters. Instead, she was cast as Venusian Queen Allura in one of the least exciting outings by Universal's leading comic duo, Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953).
Mari did end up with a respectable starring role in the western Destry (1954) opposite Audie Murphy. A remake of the classic Destry Rides Again (1939), she was cast in the Marlene Dietrich part and took great pains to affect a totally different look, darkening her hair so as not to be compared to the great star. Even the name of her character was changed from 'Frenchy' to 'Brandy'. "Destry" was not all smooth sailing. There was tension between her and director George Marshall (who had also directed the original version) and Mari suffered a facial injury as the result of a fight scene. The film was critically well received, but unfortunately Universal failed to renew its contract with Miss Blanchard, and her career then went into free fall.
Freelancing for lesser studios, she played a TB victim injected with a serum turning her into a Mr. Hyde-like killer in the lurid She Devil (1957) (during filming she nearly died of acute appendicitis). Mari then appeared for Republic in the eminently forgettable No Place to Land (1958) before briefly starring in her own short-lived adventure series Klondike (1960). Her last role of note was as the cheerful and likeable town madam in the rollicking John Wayne western comedy McLintock! (1963). Sometime that year, Mari Blanchard developed the cancer which was to claim her life in 1970 at the age of just 47.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thomas Mitchell (July 11, 1892 – December 17, 1962) was an American actor, playwright and screenwriter. Among his most famous roles in a long career are those of Gerald O'Hara, the father of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, the drunken Doc Boone in John Ford's Stagecoach, and Uncle Billy in It's a Wonderful Life. Mitchell was the first person to win an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony Award.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Edgar Buchanan (March 20, 1903 – April 4, 1979) was an American actor with a long career in both film and television, most familiar today as Uncle Joe Carson from the Petticoat Junction, Green Acres and Beverly Hillbillies television sitcoms of the 1960s. As Uncle Joe, he took over as proprietor of the Shady Rest Hotel following the death of Bea Benaderet, who had played Kate Bradley.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Edgar Buchanan, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Lori Nelson was an American actress born in Santa Fe, New Mexico on August 15, 1933. She began as a performer, dancing at the young age of 4, as well as winning a Little Miss America title. Many of her early auditions were unsuccessful. However, in 1952, she made it into her first role as Marjie Baile in Bend of the River. Many of her roles were large, but were mostly in 1950s B-movies. Today, she is acting sparingly, most recently in The Naked Monster. She costarred with Barbara Eden in the series How to Marry a Millionaire (1957–1959). However, she also had a well-remembered role as Mara, the Mayor's daughter, opposite Van Johnson (who played two roles) in the 1957 made-for-TV musical film The Pied Piper of Hamelin, a motion picture which premiered on NBC and then went on to be syndicated and shown annually on local television stations.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Lori Nelson, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Wallace Ford (12 February 1898 – 11 June 1966) was an English-born naturalized American stage and screen actor. Usually playing wise-cracking characters, he combined a tough but friendly-faced demeanor with a small but powerful, stocky physique.
Born Samuel Jones Grundy in Bolton, Lancashire, England, he spent his childhood in a Dr. Barnardo's home. At an early age he was adopted by a farmer from Manitoba, Canada, where he was ill treated. About age eleven, Ford ran away and did odd jobs, later becoming an usher in a theatre.
Following his discharge from the Army after WWI, he became a vaudeville actor in a stock company before performing on Broadway.
He started on a film career when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer gave him a part in the film Possessed (1931) and went on to appear in over 200 films, including 13 directed by John Ford.
Wallace Ford is buried in an unmarked grave in Culver City, California's Holy Cross Cemetery.
From Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Alan Hale, Jr. (March 8, 1921– January 2, 1990) was an American movie and television actor, best known for his role as Skipper (Jonas Grumby) on the popular sitcom Gilligan's Island. Hale was the lookalike son of popular supporting film actor Alan Hale.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Alan Hale, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
George Dewey Wallace (June 8, 1917 – July 22, 2005) was an American stage and screen actor. Wallace co-starred with Mary Martin in the Broadway musical Jennie and was nominated for a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for playing the male lead in New Girl in Town opposite Gwen Verdon. He is also remembered for playing Commando Cody in the movie serial Radar Men from the Moon.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Walter S. Baldwin Jr. (January 2, 1889 − January 27, 1977) was a prolific character actor whose career spanned five decades and 150 film and television roles, and numerous stage performances.
Baldwin was born in Lima, Ohio from a theatrical family and served in the First World War.
He was probably best known for playing the father of the handicapped sailor in The Best Years of Our Lives. He was the first actor to portray "Floyd the Barber" on The Andy Griffith Show.
Prior to his first film roles in 1939, Baldwin had appeared in more than a dozen Broadway plays. He played Whit in the first Broadway production of Of Mice and Men, and also appeared in the original Grand Hotel in a small role, as well as serving as the production's stage manager. He originated the role of Bensinger, the prissy Chicago Tribune reporter, in the Broadway production of The Front Page.
In the 1960s he had small acting roles in television shows such as Petticoat Junction and Green Acres. He continued to act in motion pictures, and one of his last roles was in Rosemary's Baby.
Baldwin was known for playing solid middle class burghers, although sometimes he gave portrayals of eccentric characters. He played a customer seeking a prostitute in The Lost Weekend and the rebellious prison trusty Orvy in Cry of the City. Walter Baldwin was featured in a lot of John Deere Day Movies from 1949-59 where he played the farmer Tom Gordon. In this series of Deere Day movies over a decade he helped to introduce many new pieces of John Deere farm equipment year-by-year. In each yearly movie he would be shown on his in A Tom Gordon Family Film where he would be buying new John Deere farm equipment or a new green and yellow tractor.A picture of Walter Baldwin playing Tom Gordon can be found on page 108 of Bob Pripp's book John Deere Yesterday & Today
Hal Erickson writes in Allmovie: "With a pinched Midwestern countenance that enabled him to portray taciturn farmers, obsequious grocery store clerks and the occasional sniveling coward, Baldwin was a familiar (if often unbilled) presence in Hollywood films for three decades."
Trevor Bardette (born Terva Gaston Hubbard November 19, 1902 – November 28, 1977) was an American film and television actor. Among many other roles in his long and prolific career, Bardette appeared in several episodes of Adventures of Superman and as Newman Haynes Clanton, or Old Man Clanton, in 21 episodes of the ABC/Desilu western series, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.
John Arthur Doucette (January 21, 1921 – August 16, 1994) was an American character actor who performed in more than 280 film and television productions between 1941 and 1987. A man of stocky build who possessed a deep, rich voice, he proved equally adept at portraying characters in Shakespearean plays, Westerns, and modern crime dramas. He is perhaps best remembered, however, for his villainous roles as a movie and television "tough guy".