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Ride the High Country(1962)
Full cast and crew for
Directed by: Sam Peckinpah
Writing creditsN.B. Stone Jr. (written by)
Sam Peckinpah & Robert Creighton Williams (both uncredited)
Production Company: MGM
Release Date: 28 July 1962
Runtime: 94 minutes
Plot: Aging ex-marshal Steve Judd is hired by a bank to transport a gold shipment through dangerous territory. He hires an old partner, Gil Westrum, and his young protege Heck to assist him. Steve doesn't know, however, that Gil and Heck plan to steal the gold, with or without Steve's help. On the trail, the three get involved in a young woman's desire to escape first from her father, then from her fiance and his dangerously psychotic brothers. Written by James Meek {james@oz.net}
Ride the High Country is the one Sam Peckinpah movie about which there has never been controversy--save at MGM in 1962, when a new studio regime opted to dump this beautiful, heartbreakingly elegiac Western into the bottom half of a double-bill. Westerns rarely even got reviewed back then, so it's wellnigh miraculous that critics discovered the movie and raved about it. Newsweek called it the best American picture of the year.
Veteran cowboy stars Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea portray aging gunslingers in the twilight of the Old West. McCrea's character, Steve Judd, signs on to transport a shipment of gold from a remote mining camp. Gil Westrum (Scott), an old crony now trick-shooting in a carnival, agrees to help but really aims to seduce Judd into stealing the treasure. The slow-building tension between longtime friends--one still true to the code he's lived by, the other having drifted away from it--anticipates the tortuous personal dilemmas played out to the death by Peckinpah's Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and Benny and Elita in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.
The action scenes are powerful, if only beginning to suggest the radical technique with which Peckinpah would astonish audiences in just a few years. But his feeling for flavorsome dialogue, Rabelaisian humor, and full-blooded character acting is already unmistakable. Warren Oates, L.Q. Jones, and John Davis Chandler are among the "redneck peckerwoods" complicating the journey, and Mariette Hartley is fresh and saucy in her big-screen debut. As for McCrea and Scott, they are simply superb. The two proposed that they swap roles before filming got underway, and the question of who got first billing was settled by flipping a coin. Both men retired once the film was in the can. They knew they'd never top it. --Richard T. Jameson
Cast (in credits order)
Randolph Scott . . . . . . .. Gil Westrum
Joel McCrea . . . . . . . . . . Steve Judd
Mariette Hartley . . . . . . . .Elsa Knudsen
Ron Starr . . . . . . . . . . . . Heck Longtree
Edgar Buchanan . . . . . . .Judge Tolliver
R.G. Armstrong . . . . . ... Joshua Knudsen
Jenie Jackson . . . . . . .. . Kate
James Drury . . . . . . . . . .Billy Hammond
L.Q. Jones . . . . . . . . . . .Sylvus Hammond
John Anderson . . . . . . . . Elder Hammond
John Davis Chandler . . . Jimmy Hammond
Warren Oates . . . . . . . . Henry Hammond
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Byron Foulger . . . . . . . . . Abner Sampson (uncredited)
Frank Hagney . . . . . . . . Miner (uncredited)
Percy Helton . . . . . . . . . . Luther Sampson (uncredited)
Michael T. Mikler . . . . . . . Hank (uncredited)
Carmen Phillips . . . . . . . . Saloon girl (uncredited)
Produced by: Richard E. Lyons
Original Music by: George Bassman
Cinematography by: Lucien Ballard
Film Editing by: Frank Santillo
Art Direction by: Leroy Coleman
George W. Davis
Set Decoration by: Henry Grace
Otto Siegel
Makeup Department: Mary Keats . . . . hair stylist
William Tuttle . . . makeup artist
Second Unit Director or Assistant Director: Hal W. Polaire . . . assistant director (as Hal Polaire)
Sound Department: Franklin Milton . . . . . . recording supervisor
Stunts: Bill Catching . . . . . . . stunts (uncredited)
Al Wyatt Sr. . . . . . . . . stunts (uncredited)
Editorial Department: Charles K. Hagedon . . . . . color consultant
Music Department: George Bassman. . . . . . . . . . conductor
Crew verified as complete
Trivia for:
Joel McCrea was originally cast as Westrum and Randolph Scott was Judd. But early in the production each actor went to the producer on his own, dissatisfied and ready to quit, so the roles were reversed.
This film was selected to the National Film Registry, Library of Congress, in 1992.
Average Shot Length = ~5.9 seconds. Median Shot Length = ~5.3 seconds.
Mariette Hartley's first film.
The canvas used to make the tents in the mining camp came from leftover sails from MGM's Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). In addition, an outer set used for How the West Was Won (1962) was also utilized.
Final film of Randolph Scott. He retired from acting once he saw the finished film, saying he wanted to quit while he was ahead and that he would never be able to better his work here.
The film had originally been intended for Gary Cooper and John Wayne, but Cooper died before filming began.
In the late 1980s Charlton Heston considered starring in a remake with Clint Eastwood. Heston accepted the title role in Major Dundee (1965) after seeing this film.
Contains the quintessential scene of a cowboy riding hell-bent-for-leather toward the camera, firing his Colt revolver as he comes. Each shot he fires creates a large cloud of gunsmoke because of the historically correct black powder in the cartridges, and one such cloud completely obscures him until, a second later, he rides right through it and into view again
Joel McCrea also retired after making this movie, but later agreed to appear in a few more films. He finally retired from acting at the age of 69 after making Mustang Country (1976).
CheersHondo Duke Lane
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Originally Posted by Hawkswill
