Simply Perfect

Just perfect...

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Complicated Technicolor western, mostly filmed in the scenic foothills of Glacier National Park. Blackfoot 'Indians', both real and manufactured, are prominent in the story. The Blackfoot reservation adjacent to the Park was a convenient source of 'Indian' extras. As was common at the time, the main 'Indian' roles went to Hollywood actors who spoke Hollywood 'Indian' pigeon English: very stilted, for the most part. Reagan seems out of place as a famed gunslinger.The complicated formulistic plot includes rivalries among both the Europeans and Blackfoot, both men and women, with some alliances of convenience included. Tom McCord(Gene Evans) is the thoroughly evil, backstabbing, cattle baron of this 'Buffalo Valley' region of apparently west central Montana. 'Pop'Jones and his matronly daughter Sierra Nevada(Barbara Stanwyck, age 46)headed a leisurely 7 month cattle drive from Texas to this well-watered grazing land, with only a preliminary claim on it, unaware of how criminal their well-established neighbor was. McCord is determined to scare off or dispose of these new land claimants, as he has previous ones. He utilizes the European -hating war chief Natchakoa to engineer a nocturnal stampede of their cattle, while dispatching their minimal cowhands. Initially, it is thought that all the Jones outfit died in this incident. But Sierra and her foreman Nat(Chubby Johnson) survived and were taken by friendly Blackfoot leader Colorados to a Blackfoot village to recuperate.Meanwhile, army undercover agent Farrell (Ron Reagan) signs as a hired gun for McCord and is given the assignment of dispatching the stampede survivors. He pretends to agree, but is captured by Blackfoot, who now realize that it's bad for them to be involved in the planned murders. Meanwhile, McCord has filed a claim to the land Sierra assumed would be hers, as well as a claim on her cattle brand, thinking her dead. When he discovers his error, he sends Farrell to offer to buy her cattle, on the condition she return to Texas. At one point, she agrees, but then discovers that McCord was behind the stampede. Farrell discovers that McCord has been the source of the illegal rifles being supplied the Blackfoot, which is his main purpose here. Farrel gradually shifts his allegiance from McCord to Sierra, who has lost her companion Nat to a Natchakoa arrow.The old Blackfoot chief Powhani dies. Rivals to replace him, Colorados and Natchakoa have a hand to hand duel, which Colorados wins, but declines to dispatch Natchakoa, to his later regret. We are now ready for the final confrontation between the 'good' and 'bad' elements. Blackfoot princess Starfire, jealous of Colorados' friendship with Sierra, leads her and Farrell into an ambush by Natchakoa's forces, but is accidentally killed herself. McCord's and Colorados' bunches now show up for a complicated 4 team shootout, and all the baddies are killed. Sierra and Farrell hint at a possible future together.According to the stone property marker, this story took place in 1888, very close to the end of the open range period on the Western Plains. However, we have the anachronism of Colonel Carrington: Farrell's boss. This is a historically relevant name, as Colonel Carrington headed the effort to control Sioux raids on immigrants going to southwest Montana along the Bozeman Trail in the mid-1860s. But, he left this region after only a rather brief stay, and never made it past WY. Interestingly, the first significant drive of Texas Longhorns from Texas to Montana occurred during this same period, as dramatized in the '55 Clark Gable-starring "The Tall Men".Barbara was not the first, nor most impressive, Hollywood Montana 'cattle queen'. For example, a much younger, more glamorous- looking Alexis Smith posed as an established 'cattle queen' a few years earlier in the Technicolor "Montana", with a more charismatic adversary/love interest in Errol Flynn.The plot of this film appears to owe much to the historic story of 'Cattle Kate', which includes an established southwestern WY cattle baron named Boswell: a character very similar to that of McCord in this story. Unfortunately, newcomer 'Cattle Kate' didn't fare as well as Sierra, being framed as a cattle rustler herself, resulting in her execution.Strange that the great cattle die off in the 1886-7 Montana winter wasn't mentioned. Many herds were decimated and ranchers ruined by the extreme cold and lack of winter feed. This is just prior to when this story supposedly takes place.The whites-friendly Blackfoot leader Colorados supposedly had studied at a college. Most likely, this was actually the Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, PA, established just a few years earlier. Neighboring Sioux were among the prominent early students.

Barbara Stanwyck doesn't take adversity laying down in director Allan Dwan's "Cattle Queen of Montana" as the eponymous, pistol-packing, lead-slinging, red-headed Sierra Nevada Jones. This adventurous horse opera features future U.S. President Ronald Reagan playing second fiddle to Stanwyck as a hired gun on her side in an Indian war. This is the kind of western that has good Indians and bad Indians. "Magnificent Obsession" scenarist Robert Blees and "Hell's Angels" scribe Howard Estabrook let Barbara kill her quota of guys, while Reagan gets to blast his six-gun out of her fist in one scene. The Glacier National Valley scenery makes the perfect backdrop to this larger-than-life oater. Basically, "Cattle Queen of Montana" is a revenge western with the heroine searching for the men who ambushed her dad. The villain is ambitious, but he seems a little short-handed when it comes to having dependable help. Stanwyck, her father 'Pop' Jones (Morris Ankrum), and their foreman move a herd of over a thousand cattle into the territory to lay stake to a ranch in the middle of the wilderness. Renegade Native Americans bushwhack Jones and her family. Jones' father bites the dust and their friend Nat is laid up while our heroine tries to absorb what has happened. She is surprised when good Indians arrive to help them. The Indians are Blackfeet, and two of them are vying to lead the tribe after their ailing father migrates to the Happy Hunting Ground in the sky. Colorados (Lance Fuller) is an educated Indian who asks questions before he fires his weapon. His volatile brother Natchakoa (Anthony Caruso) is an uneducated, liquor-swilling brave who shoots first and asks questions afterward. Colorados allows Sierra and Nat to recuperate in his village. The villain is greedy cattleman named Tom McCord (Gene Evans) who wants Natchakoa to scare off the settlers so he can buy their land up cheaply. Neither Natchakoa nor McCord are prepared to tangle with Sierra. She has no problem packing a pistol and putting lead into people. A wandering gunman, Farrell (Ronald Reagan), rides into the country, too, and takes a job as one of McCord's minions.

Out of RKO Radio Pictures comes Cattle Queen of Montana, directed by Allan Dwan and written by Robert Blees, Howard Estabrook (screenplay) & Thomas Blackburn (story). It stars Barbara Stanwyck, Ronald Reagan, Gene Adams, Lance Fuller, Anthony Caruso, Jack Elam & Yvette Duguay. The music is scored by Louis Forbes and it's a Technicolor production with John Alton on photography. Locations used for the film are Glacier National Park, Montana & Iverson Ranch, Chatsworth, California. Stanwyck plays Sierra Nevada Jones, a tough cowgirl who along with her father, drive the family herd up from Texas to Montana. Planning to build a ranch to set themselves up, tragedy strikes when they are attacked by some renegade Blackfoot Indians. However, all is not as it seems, just what has shifty Tom McCord (Evans) got to do with things? Why is gunslinger Farrell (Reagan) working for McCord? And can war between the Blackfoot and the white man be averted?Standard formulaic stuff that is only really of interest for the photography of Alton. Cowboys and Indians, good and bad on each side, go head to head in a cliché riddled movie bogged down by a pretty turgid script. Not even the normally classy Stanwyck can lift herself to a performance capable of saving the piece. There's some credit due for making the lead protagonist a strong willed woman, and even tho it's a bit late in the cycle of topic, depicting the Indians as not all savages-as the white man encroaches onto their land-is a bonus. But with American character actors Fuller & Caruso playing the in fighting leaders of the Blackfoot tribe, it just comes across as corny and wholly unbelievable, while Dwan was indeed a more than capable director, here the action lacks zip and the film gasps for some dramatic air as the narrative goes around in circles.The story off screen is more entertaining than the film itself, where Reagan was constantly at odds with producer Benedict Bogeaus. The future President of the United States of America took one look at the script and voiced concerns, suggesting many changes, all of which were ignored. Royalty status was afforded Stanwyck while Reagan got next to no help from the producer, this perhaps goes someway to explaining his limp performance. Tho, again, the script calls for him to be part of one of the most lukewarm and pointless romances in 1950s Oaters, he got no help either way on this picture. Still, there's Alton's photography of the Glacier National Park to hold the attention, even if the "new" scrubbed up print of the film is far from doing it justice.That its claim to fame is being the film playing at the theater in Hill Valley in the film Back to the Future, says volumes, this is poor all told, and not even worthy of recommending to those after a time filling Cowboys & Indians no brainer. 3/10

An unusual alliance is operating in the film Cattle Queen of Montana. Cattle baron Gene Evans and dissident Blackfoot chieftain Anthony Caruso have an arrangement of convenience. Evans provides whiskey and arms and in return Caruso makes sure the braves under his command raid and kill any settlers who come into the Montana valley that Evans wants to keep all to himself.Of course they pick on the wrong party when they attack Barbara Stanwyck's party. She and father Morris Ankrum have staked a claim on a piece of the valley. Her father is killed, but Stanwyck survives and his taken to the camp of Lance Fuller, Caruso's rival in the Blackfeet nation.So we have some unusual white/Indian alliances forming here and lurking through it all is a mysterious stranger played by Ronald Reagan who is not quite what he seems to be at all.It's a good, but routine western, helped considerably by good location photography and crisp direction by Allan Dwan. Stanwyck looks very much like she's in preparation for her role as Victoria Barkley in The Big Valley. And Ronald Reagan who while he doesn't do mysterious real well, does look right at home on the range.