Gun Glory *** (1957, Stewart Granger, Rhonda Fleming, Chill Wills, Steve Rowland) – Classic Movie Review 10,556

After Rhonda Fleming had the female lead in John Sturges’s classic Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957), she supported Stewart Granger in a much lesser, though still acceptable item, Gun Glory at MGM, a 1957 American Metrocolor and CinemaScope Western film directed by Roy Rowland. Fleming and Granger appear opposite Steve Rowland, the son of the director.

The screenplay is by William Ludwig, based on the novel Man of the West by Philip Yordan, which Ben Maddow said he wrote under Yordan’s name. Yordan denied this: ‘If you read the screenplay, you’ll see it fits the hero character that I’ve always written.’ Maddow also claimed to have written the script. Yordan was a HUAC-era front for Maddow, and was credited for the screenplays of Johnny Guitar (1954) and God’s Little Acre (1958), which Maddow probably wrote.

The film is shot on locations in Humboldt County, California.

Burl Ives was to play the preacher but had to quit and was replaced by Chill Wills, though the music Ives recorded the film is retained.

It earned $2,550,000 at the box office, but flopped, making a loss of $265,000, on a budget  $1,707,000, no doubt damaging MGM’s faith in the series of Westerns it started making after the success of The Fastest Gun Alive, the 1956 MGM Western film starring Glenn Ford, Jeanne Crain, and Broderick Crawford.

Granger thought MGM assigned him to this low-budget film to punish him for not renewing his contract with the studio. Despite that, Gun Glory is an unexpected little blaze of glory for Granger as Tom Early, a retired gunfighter living in a Wyoming town with his mutinous 17-year-old son Tom Jr (miscast 24-year-old Steve Rowland, on the strength of being the son of director Roy) after mom has died.

They come together when bad guy gunmen working for the villainous cattleman Grimsell threaten the small-townsfolk, and Granger has to rescue the wounded boy and Jo (Fleming), who has taken a job as housekeeper at Early’s ranch.

The familiar stuff is turned into a decent Western with the help of Granger’s performance and the expert direction.

Also in the cast are James Gregory as villainous cattleman Grimsell, Jacques Aubuchon as general store owner Sam Wainscott, Arch Johnson as Gunn, Rayford Barnes as Blonde, William Fawcett and Carl Pitti.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,556

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