Four Faces West *** (1948, Joel McCrea, Frances Dee, Charles Bickford) – Classic Movie Review 7460

‘The Strangest Desperado the West Has Ever Known’. ‘Hunted from the black hills through a thousand miles of badlands!’

Director Alfred E Green’s well-produced, involving 1948 Western Four Faces West (aka They Passed This Way) stars Joel McCrea as outlaw cowboy Ross McEwen, who needs to run from relentless lawman Pat Garrett (Charles Bickford) and his posse after holding up a New Mexico bank, but wants to help an invalid and falls for pretty nurse Fay Hollister (Frances Dee).

They Passed This Way is an excellent low-budget Western fictionalising and romanticising the real-life theme of Pat Garrett’s hunting down of Billy the Kid, with cast, script, black and white photography (by Russell Harlan) and score (by Paul Sawtell) all first rate.

C Graham Baker and Teddi Sherman’s screenplay is based on Eugene Manlove Rhodes’s novel Paso por Aqui. The screenplay was nominated as Best Written American Western by the Writers Guild of America, USA 1949. Unusually, it is a Western without gunfire.

Also in the cast are Joseph Calleia as Monte Marquez, William Conrad as Sheriff Egan, Martin Garralaga, Raymond Largay, John Parrish, Dan White, Davison Clark and Houseley Stevenson.

Four Faces West (also known as They Passed This Way) is directed by Alfred E Green, runs 90 minutes, is made by Enterprise Productions and Harry Sherman Productions, is released by United Artists, is written by C Graham Baker and Teddi Sherman, based on Eugene Manlove Rhodes’s novel Paso por Aqui, is shot in black and white by Russell Harlan, is produced by David Loewe and Charles Einfeld, and is scored by Paul Sawtell.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7460

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