The Man from Laramie **** (1955, James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Donald Crisp, Cathy O’Donnell, Alex Nicol) – Classic Movie Review 2050

Director Anthony Mann’s superb 1955 Western is the fifth and final fruit of his splendid collaboration with James Stewart.

Stewart plays The Man from Laramie, Will Lockhart, the stranger who rides into town looking for the gunrunner who caused his brother’s death and finds himself at odds with cattle baron Alec Waggoman (Donald Crisp), his sadistic son Dave (Alex Nicol) and reliable ranch foreman Arthur Kennedy. Lockhart courts danger by defying the Waggomans in working for one of their oldest rivals.

Mann’s magnificent, brutal Western is a career peak of both star and director, with confident support from Cathy O’Donnell (as Barbara Waggoman), Wallace Ford, Aline MacMahon and the Western character player reliable like Jack Elam, James Millican, Gregg Barton, Boyd Stockman and Frank DeKova.

If you like Westerns, The Man from Laramie is a bit of a cracker. Philip Yordan and Frank Burt’s distinguished screenplay is based on a story of the same title by Thomas T Flynn, first published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1954, and thereafter as a novel in 1955. It is one of the first Westerns to be filmed in CinemaScope to capture the vastness of the scenery and Charles Lang Jnr’s widescreen Technicolor colour cinematography is an outstanding treat.

Mann’s five films with James Stewart are Winchester ’73 (1950), Bend of the River (1952), The Naked Spur (1953), The Far Country (1955) and The Man from Laramie (1955).

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