The Rawhide Years **½ (1955, Tony Curtis, Colleen Miller, Arthur Kennedy) – Classic Movie Review 4868

Director Rudolph Maté’s 1955 movie The Rawhide Years retells one of the usual, standard, regulation B-movie Western plots – a dishonest riverboat gambler sets out to clear his name of the murder of the town’s leading citizen of which he is innocent by finding the real killer before a lynch mob gets to him.

However, the film is given a boost or two by the casting of the young Tony Curtis as the riverboat gambler hero Ben Matthews and Peter van Eyck as the villain André Boucher, as well as the Technicolor cinematography on California locations, shot by Irving Glassberg.

It also stars agreeable Colleen Miller as Ben’s luscious entertainer girlfriend Zoe Fontaine, Arthur Kennedy as Ben’s friend Rick Harper, William Demarest, William Gargan and Minor Watson.

Even if it feels a bit second hand and a little second rate, The Rawhide Years remains entirely tolerable for Fifties Western fans.

Curtis recalled: ‘The only Western in which I was a star. Once I did one of my own stunts, jumping from a second-storey window, but I forgot to put on my kneepads. I hit the ground and ended up in the hospital for a week and a half.’

Also in the cast are Donald Randolph, Robert J Wilke, Trevor Bardette, James Anderson, Robert Foulk, Chubby Johnson, Leigh Snowden, Don Beddoe, Malcolm Atterbury, Lane Bradford, Lane Chandler, Charles Evans, Marlene Felton, I Stanford Jolley, Rex Lease, Clarence Lung, Kenneth MacDonald, Chuck Robertson, and John Mitchum.

The Rawhide Years is directed by Rudolph Maté, is 85 minutes long, is made and released by Universal International Pictures, is written by Earl Fenton, Robert Presnell Jr and D D Beauchamp, based on the novel by Norman A Fox, is produced by Stanley Rubin, is scored by Frank Skinner, Hans J Salter and Eric Ziesl, and is designed by Alexander Golitzen and Richard H Riedel.

Curtis and Miller also starred together in The Purple Mask (1955).

The cast are Tony Curtis as Ben Matthews, Colleen Miller as Zoe Fontaine, Arthur Kennedy as Rick Harper, William Demarest as Brand Comfort, William Gargan as Marshal Sommers, Peter van Eyck as Andre Boucher, Minor Watson as Matt Comfort, Donald Randolph as Carrico, Robert J Wilke as Neal, Trevor Bardette as Captain, James Anderson as Deputy Wade, Robert Foulk as Mate, Chubby Johnson as Gif Lessing, Leigh Snowden as Miss Vanilla Bissell, Don Beddoe as Frank Porter, Malcolm Atterbury, Lane Bradford, Lane Chandler, Charles Evans, Marlene Felton, I Stanford Jolley, Rex Lease, Clarence Lung, Kenneth MacDonald, Chuck Robertson, and John Mitchum (the younger brother of Robert Mitchum) as Card Player (uncredited).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 4868

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