Touches You

Fresh and Exciting

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Blistering performances.

The film is a combination of western, melodrama and musical. The action sequences are quite good, and there is humor, too. Even if you have not read the book by Gwen Bristow, it is obvious that producer Herbert Yates has omitted key chunks of the narrative, presumably to keep the focus on his wife, Vera Ralston, who stars in this project.But the omissions hurt the picture. Indeed, too many liberties have been taken while transferring Bristow's epic story to the big screen: the New York prologue is eliminated; we do not see the death of the California woman who kills herself and her baby; the Russian character is introduced at the Hale ranch, not in San Francisco. And the film spends its final half hour in Los Angeles.There are other changes. For instance, we do not get a scene in which Garnet (Joan Leslie) learns she's pregnant; and at one point, she has her arm in a sling, though we have no idea why she's been injured at the ranch. Apparently, there was an earthquake, but those scenes were either edited out or not filmed at all.Despite the imperfections, the film is more enjoyable than one would expect it to be. It is told from the point of view of the western female; and at its heart, the story celebrates the friendship of pioneer women.

I was unfortunate enough to see this last week. The book has long been a favorite of mine; the movie is a disaster.Garnet, Florinda, and Oliver were completely miscast---poor Gwen Bristow must still be whirling in her grave after seeing what Hollywood had done to her wonderful saga. Some of the minor roles (John Ives, the Handsome Brute) were adequate as were the sets and costumes. However,the main characters completely failed to resemble their literary counterparts, and their acting was wooden and totally unconvincing. The book is a wonderful story brimming with action and should have made an exciting and colorful movie. Instead, it is incredibly boring and tedious. What a shame!

I have a poster of Jubilee Trail on my wall and at the top it says, "The Greatest American Drama Since Gone With the Wind." Now that's a howler and yet I've always liked this unusual western. Nothing quite like Jubilee Trail on a rainy Saturday afternoon with cookies and milk. It's about the settling of California but is short on action and long on dialogue... not for the typical western watcher perhaps. It kind of reminds me of "Johnny Guitar" (made the same year by the same studio) with two women as the leads. Here they are not protagonists but great, supportive friends. Top-billed is Vera Ralston (married to the studio head) but the real star is the always-enchanting Joan Leslie and this is one of her finest moments. Forrest Tucker, John Russell, Jim Davis, Buddy Baer and others who have worked with Leslie and Ralston before make this film look like a happy working experience for all. We couch cowboys are the winners.

This is a wonderful story which was the most poorly cast movie I've ever seen. I've read the book 20+ times in my life (obviously a favorite!) but the casting person obviously didn't waste their time doing the same even once. The book has rich characters which the movie didn't bring out. Overall, terribly disappointing. Florinda was the blonde, not Hispanic. Garnet had the black hair (I guess in the movies in those days, blondes were the good girls and dark hair was the bad...kind of like the white hat/black hat cowboys!A perfect cast (impossible because of age differences) would have Gary Cooper as John, William Shatner as Oliver, Kirk Douglas as Texas and James Cagney as Oliver's brother, to name a few! That's just part of my dream cast.My advice is to go get the book from the library!