Calamity Jane and Sam Bass ** (1949, Yvonne De Carlo, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart, Willard Parker, Norman Lloyd, Lloyd Bridges) – Classic Movie Review 12,050

Director George Sherman’s 1948 Universal Pictures Technicolor film Calamity Jane and Sam Bass is a fairly feeble Western plus romance B-movie, with a spunky, overeager-to-please performance by Yvonne De Carlo as Calamity Jane trying to compensate for the poor, totally made-up script by her over-the-top acting.

Howard Duff is left not knowing what to do as the Texas outlaw Sam Bass who gets mixed up with robbery, gunsmoke, cowgirl Calamity (Yvonne De Carlo) and nice girl Kathy Egan (Dorothy Hart).

At least it looks good thanks to the expensive production shot on location in Technicolor by cinematographer Irving Glassberg, and there are some excellent cast members to enjoy: Willard Parker, Houseley Stevenson, Ann Doran, Norman Lloyd, Lloyd Bridges, Marc Lawrence and Milburn Stone.

Also in the cast are Willard Parker as Will Egan, Norman Lloyd as Jim Murphy, Lloyd Bridges as Joel Collins, Marc Lawrence as Harry Dean, Houseley Stevenson as Dakota, Milburn Stone as Abe Jones, Clifton Young as Link, John Rodney as Morgan, Roy Roberts as Marshal Peak, Ann Doran as Mrs Lucy Egan, Charles Cane as J Wells, and Walter Baldwin as Doc Purdy.

In March 1948 Universal announced it was making The Story of Sam Bass, from a story by director George Sherman, as an expensive production in Technicolor shot on location in Kanab, Utah, where filming started on 7 October 1948. Other locations are Johnson Canyon, Vermillion Cliffs, and the Gap.

It is the second film about Calamity Jane made that year, following The Paleface.

It premiered on 4 July 1949.

It runs 86 minutes.

Universal contract star De Carlo did not want to make the film as it was a Western, but did it to avoid going on suspension.  She was briefly engaged to Howard Duff in April 1947.

Doris Day’s musical Calamity Jane (1953) is the Calamity Jane movie.

Yvonne De Carlo was an active Republican who campaigned for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. She recalled the time when she ‘loved to give interviews, admitting my to-the-right-of-right politics.’

Howard Duff was listed as a Communist subversive in 1950.

Lloyd Bridges was blacklisted briefly in the 1950s after he admitted to the House Un-American Activities Committee that he had been a member of the Actors’ Laboratory Theatre, a group with links to the Communist party. But he returned to acting after recanting his membership and serving as a HUAAC cooperative witness.

Norman Lloyd died in his sleep at his home in Brentwood, Los Angeles, on 11 May 2021, at the age of 106.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,050

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com