Cattle Queen of Montana ** (1954, Barbara Stanwyck, Ronald Reagan, Gene Evans, Lance Fuller) – Classic Movie Review 8157

Cult director Allan Dwan’s tame though acceptable 1954 Western Cattle Queen of Montana stars Barbara Stanwyck as the battling cattle queen Sierra Nevada Jones, who fights to protect her cattle from raids by both renegade Indians and ruthless rancher and rustler Tom McCord (Gene Evans), who turn out to be working in cohoots.

She is helped by college-educated chief’s son Colorados (Lance Fuller), but what of McCord’s hired gun, Farrell (Ronald Reagan)?

Tame it may be, but the solid acting of Queen Barbara and her second-fiddling co-star Ronald Reagan as her love interest, who turns out to be an Army agent come onto the scene to sort out the bad guys, warrant interested viewing.

Cattle Queen of Montana is attractively filmed by John Alton in Technicolor partly at Montana’s Glacier National Park, and also at the Columbia/ Warner Bros Ranch, Burbank, and the Iverson Ranch, Chatsworth, Los Angeles, with nearly enough exciting action and impressive production values (especially for an RKO film) to balance the hard-to-believe, familiar-themed screenplay by Robert Blees and Howard Estabrook, from a story by Thomas W Blackburn. The redoubtable Stanwyck, giving a tough, hard-bitten turn, is always worth a look.

Also in the cast are Lance Fuller, Anthony Caruso, Jack Elam, Yvette Duguay, Morris Ankrum, Chubby Johnson, Myron Healey, Paul Birch, Rodd Redwing, Burt Mustin and Byron Foulger.

Though minor, the film is not entirely forgotten. When Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) first enters Hill Valley on 5 November 1955 in Back to the Future (1985), Cattle Queen of Montana is playing at the Essex Theater.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8157

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